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If Prime Minister Andrej Babiš does not propose that the current director of the Czech Security Information Service (BIS) Michal Koudelka remains in charge of the Czech civilian counter-intelligence service for another five years, the opposition coalition SPOLU (Civic Democrats, Christian Democrats, TOP 09) threatens to call for an extraordinary meeting of the Chamber of Deputies. The leaders of the parties that make up the coalition made the announcement on Friday, saying that they have collected enough signatures from MPs to convey the meeting next week.

The threat comes after the Friday meeting of the Security Committee of the lower house of Parliament, which was meant to discuss reappointing Michal Koudelka as director of BIS, was called off. Committee chairman Radek Koten said in a letter to its members that there was no legal basis for convening the extraordinary meeting, which had been requested by Andrej Babiš. The Czech prime minister has since announced that he will discuss the nomination of the new BIS chief with Social Democrat Chairman Jan Hamáček.

The term of current BIS head Michal Koudelka, who took up the post in 2015, is set to end in mid-August. While he has the backing of Babiš and most committee members, President Miloš Zeman has been a vocal critic and refused to promote him to the customary rank of general.

The 47th annual week-long Summer Film School (LFŠ) and Festival in Uherské Hradiště gets underway on Friday. It opens with Martin Šulík’s ‘Man with Rabbit Ears’ and closes with Peter Bebjak’s ‘The Auschwitz Report’, this year’s Slovak Oscar candidate.

Guests include Czech actor, humourist and screenwriter Zdeněk Svěrák, Slovak actor Martin Huba, Serbian director Goran Marković, Polish editor Jaroslaw Kamiński and Chilean director and photographer Sergio Castro San Martín.

Special sidebars include Made in Poland, featuring 25 films from that country to be distributed in Czech film clubs, and Eastern Promises, focussing on Yakutian cinema, a phenomenon in contemporary Russian film, along with seasoned masters such as Andrei Konchalovsky and Victor Kossakovsky.

As expected, the Czech National Bank on Thursday raised key interest rates for a second time this year, by 0.25 percentage points to 0.75 percent.

Economists say the main reason for the rate increase is the fear of rising inflation related to the economic recovery following the full year of the coronavirus pandemic.

At its last monetary meeting on 23 June, the central bank raised interest rates for the first time since February 2020, also by 0.25 percentage points. Before the pandemic hit last February, the base rate was 2.25 percent.

The star guest of this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) will be the American actor, director and writer Ethan Hawke, organisers announced.

Hawke will receive the Festival President’s Award and present Paul Schrader’s thriller First Reformed, in which he portrays a priest undergoing a crisis of faith.

KVIFF takes place from 20 to 28 August. The Festival President’s Award is given to actors, directors, and producers who have contributed in a fundamental way to the development of contemporary world cinema.