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08/14/2026
The Czech Army is recruiting 2,997 soldiers this year, according to Defence Minister Jaromír Zůna (SPD). The army had originally planned to recruit 2,250 people. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) said at today’s military oath ceremony in Vyškov that the army has secured funding at the level of two percent of GDP and that the government will approve next year’s budget by the end of September.
In 2014, NATO allies committed to spending two percent of GDP on defence by 2025 in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Last year, at the NATO summit in The Hague, they adopted a new target of five percent by 2035, with 3.5 percent allocated to direct defence spending. The Czech Republic failed to meet the two-percent commitment last year, and the government is not currently expecting to meet it this year either. Among NATO allies, the Czech Republic ranks near the bottom in terms of defence spending.
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08/14/2026
Banks and building societies provided CZK 40.4 billion in mortgage loans in July. Compared with July last year, this represents a seven percent increase, while mortgage lending fell by 17 percent compared with June.
New mortgages excluding refinancing declined by 16 percent month-on-month to CZK 30.8 billion. Average interest rates rose to 4.9 percent, up from 4.79 percent in June. The figures come from the Czech Banking Association’s Hypomonitor statistics.
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08/14/2026
Scrapping the ninth grade of primary school would likely lead to poorer educational outcomes, increase the number of young people entering the labour market without sufficient qualifications, and place an excessive burden on the education system. Experts from several organisations (EDUin, PAQ Research and IDEA at CERGE-EI) agreed on this in a joint statement.
The possibility of abolishing the ninth grade of primary schools was recently raised by Chamber of Deputies Speaker and SPD leader Tomio Okamura and Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO). However, Education Minister Robert Plaga (ANO) said the proposal is not currently under consideration.
In mid-July, Okamura proposed abolishing the ninth grade of primary schools, as is the case in Germany, Poland and Hungary. He said the move could save the state budget CZK 50 million a year. According to Plaga, however, the claimed savings of CZK 50 billion are unrealistic.
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08/14/2026
Czech swimmer Barbora Seemanová has won the European title in the 200-metre freestyle for the third time, improving her national record by 0.74 seconds to 1:54.38 in the final in Paris. Her time was also a new championship record.
The 25-year-old Prague native previously won the event at the 2021 European Championships in Budapest and in Belgrade in 2024. The title is her fourth at the European long-course championships and her sixth medal overall.
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08/14/2026
Czech tennis player Kateřina Siniaková has won her 38th doubles title, winning the Canadian Open in Toronto alongside China’s Zhang Shuai. The top-seeded pair beat the Italian-American duo of Sara Errani and Nicole Melichar-Martinez 6-3, 6-4 in the final without dropping a set.
It is Siniaková’s sixth title of the season and her third with Zhang Shuai, following their victory in Adelaide in January. She won her other four titles, including the French Open, with American Taylor Townsend. Siniaková now has 10 WTA 1000 doubles titles.
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08/13/2026
The Czech government is to spend four billion crowns on measures to combat drought, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, Agriculture Minister Martin Šebestyán and Petr Kubala, head of the Vltava River Basin Authority, said at a special press conference at the Slapy reservoir on Thursday. The National Drought Coalition is set to resume its work on Monday.
The money will go towards connecting water-management networks, retaining water in the landscape, building small reservoirs and ponds, and irrigation measures. Some will also be used to build larger water infrastructure. In the autumn, the cabinet is expected to discuss a special law specifying 20 planned water reservoirs.
Opposition parties criticised the government for its response to drought and heat. STAN leader Vít Rakušan called on the Environment Ministry to take the risks posed by climate change more seriously.
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08/13/2026
Friday will be mostly sunny and warmer, with highs of 27 to 32 degrees Celsius. No rain is expected.
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08/13/2026
Age discrimination in the Czech labour market may start as early as 40, according to a study by the deputy ombudsman and researchers from Masaryk University, released on Thursday. It found that job seekers’ chances of receiving a positive response from employers decline with age, including in their forties and fifties.
The researchers sent 4,280 fictional CVs from men aged 40 to 55 to jobs advertised through the country's Labour Office. Although all the applicants met the job requirements, only 28.9 percent of those aged 40 to 44 received a positive response. For men aged 51 to 55, the rate was almost three percentage points lower.
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08/13/2026
Czech tennis player Kateřina Siniaková has reached the doubles final in Toronto and is now one win away from her 38th career doubles title. The top-seeded Czech-Chinese pair Siniaková and Zhang Shuai beat Slovakia’s Tereza Mihalíková and Britain’s Olivia Nicholls 6-1, 7-5 in the semi-final.
They will face Italy’s Sara Errani and American Nicole Melichar-Martinez in the final. A win would give Siniaková her sixth title of the season.
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08/13/2026
Around 90 percent of the more than 1,400 small hydropower plants in Czechia have stopped producing electricity due to low river levels, according to the Czech Chamber for Renewable Energy Sources. Hydropower normally accounts for just three to five percent of the country’s electricity, so the drop is not expected to threaten the power supply.
Large hydropower plants are still operating, although some have reduced their output. Overall, hydropower production fell by around 17 percent in the first half of the year. The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute says this is one of the driest years since 1961, with rainfall so far at just 66 percent of the 1991–2020 average.
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