News

A Prague court has ordered former Motorists parliamentary candidate Jakub Svoboda to apologise to activist and documentary filmmaker Ivona Remundová over a false Facebook post. Jakub Svoboda claimed a photograph showed Ivona Remundová giving a Nazi salute during a protest against the Motorists. The court found she had actually raised her arm while directing demonstrators. Jakub Svoboda was ordered to remove the post, publish an apology for 30 days, send Ivona Remundová a written apology and pay her CZK 50,000 in damages. The ruling is not final and Jakub Svoboda can appeal.

A Czech man jailed in Russia after staging a protest on Moscow’s Red Square has been released and has left the country, the Czech Foreign Ministry said on Monday. A Moscow court sentenced the man to 13 days in prison in September after he protested near Lenin’s Mausoleum. According to the Interfax news agency, he held a sign in English which Russian authorities said was intended to discredit the country’s armed forces. The court also imposed two fines totalling 60,000 roubles, equivalent to around CZK 15,000. The Czech Foreign Ministry said the man was released on Saturday.

The Czech Industry Ministry failed to properly assess the impact of hundreds of millions of crowns spent supporting start-ups, according to the Supreme Audit Office. The ministry provided CzechInvest with CZK 914 million between 2021 and 2025 for programmes aimed at creating companies, expanding abroad and testing new technologies. Auditors found that most programmes measured the number of projects supported rather than their actual results. The ministry acknowledged shortcomings and said Industry Minister Karel Havlíček (ANO) had appointed a start-up commissioner and begun work on new legislation. Auditors also identified CZK 21 million in uneconomical spending on agency workers.

Around 40 editors-in-chief of Czech news and current affairs media have called on politicians and other public officials to reject violence, uphold standards of civil communication and protect free access to information. In a joint appeal published on Monday, they stressed that politicians should not incite violence and should discourage aggressive behaviour among their supporters, including on social media. The editors also warned against restricting access to official information, arguing that public institutions do not belong to those currently running them. A 2025 survey found that nearly 80 percent of Czech journalists had experienced aggression, attacks or other threats.