Lower house approves establishment of national memory institute

The lower house has approved the establishment of a national memory institute which would study the country's communist past and the period of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Its main task would be to collect, analyse and publish documents from those times including materials concerning the activities of communist secret services. Left-wing parties were against the bill: the Social Democrats expressed their protest by not taking part in the vote. The bill has yet to be approved by the Senate, which had proposed it, and signed by the President.