News

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, intends to review the Czech government's public finance reform package. According to Czech National Bank vice-governor in Washington, Ludek Niedermayer, the IMF is particularly interested in the proposed new fiscal policy because the state of the national budget is the most sensitive part of economic development. Fiscal reform is also a condition for discussion on the adoption of the euro to start.

The government's proposed reform plan is to be presented to parliament in June, where support for the package of ambitious tax reforms and spending cuts is not guaranteed.

Cabinet, at its session on Wednesday, is expected to discuss an amendment to the road traffic law that lowers a number of penalties, criticised as exaggerated. Under current law, for example, drivers and even cyclists who cause an accident and injure themselves only are penalised. The amendment proposes to do away with the penalty. Under the current law, drivers who park in a spot for people with disabilities are fined and lose their license. The amendment proposes to punish the drivers with a fine only.

On a related note, the crown of Miss Czech Republic 2007 has been auctioned off for one million Czech crowns. Slovenian national Loris Pozar bought the crown as well as that of Miss Congeniality for a total of 1.2 million. But it will not be another two months before Mr Pozar will have the crowns delivered because they are still being made. The original crowns were stolen before the show; the crowns worn by the contestants on Saturday were borrowed from last year's winners. The proceeds from the auction will go to a children's home.

Germany and the Czech Republic have clashed over US visa policies, Mlada fronta Dnes reports. The paper wrote on Saturday that Germany's ambassador to the United States Klaus Scharioth wrote to US congressmen asking them to consider discussing a proposed US visa waiver programme within a United States-European Union framework and not with individual EU countries. The daily claims that in the same letter, Mr Scharioth also protested against planned tougher security measures, which many western European Union countries whose citizens currently don't need visas to the US would also have to adapt to. The German ambassador, whose country currently holds the presidency of the European Union, said his stance reflected the EU's position on the issue of US visas. The Czech Ambassador to the US Petr Kolar said that he had expressed his "frustration" to Mr Scharioth over the letter's contents. The Czech government had previously indicated it was hopeful that visas for its citizens travelling to the US will be waived in the near future.