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Trade unions have declared a strike alert in protest against the austerity package unveiled by the government last week. According to the Czech-Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions, the austerity measures will place an excessively heavy burden on the weakest social groups, among them pensioners, families with children and employees. The austerity package will bring tax hikes for companies and individuals, lay-offs or lower salaries in the public sector and further price rises in goods and services. Talks between government officials, unions and employers are expected later today.

The Czech counter-intelligence service (BIS) has confirmed that in 2021 it uncovered widespread corruption at the Ministry of Agriculture, which led to a police raid in late March and early April of last year. According to BIS spokesman Ladislav Šticha, police officers detained three people from then minister Miroslav Toman’s inner circle and confiscated tens of millions of crowns in cash. The BIS spokesperson said the service was reporting on the case now in order to counter leaks of selected information from the investigation.

The Czech artist Jitka Svobodová, who started as a painter before moving to drawings, has died at the age of 81. She was repeatedly denied enrollment at Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts before eventually getting in in 1961.

In the period following the Soviet occupation she was barred from exhibiting and trained as a restorer. After the fall of communism she headed the drawing studio at the Academy of Fine Art.

Jitka Svobodová had a retrospective at the Prague City Gallery at the time of her death.

Opposition leaders ANO would have come first in general elections held at the turn of May with 30.5 percent, suggests a poll by the Kantar agency published on Sunday.

The survey indicates that the three parties in the Together bloc, who are in government with the Mayors and the Pirates, would together have taken 25 percent of the vote; all five groupings together would have picked up 43 percent of the vote.

A Kantar analyst said the poll suggested the current government coalition would be unable to form a majority again.

The survey indicates the Civic Democrats would get 17 percent, the Pirates 11 percent and Freedom and Direct Democracy 9 percent. The Mayors, TOP 09, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats are all just above the 5 percent threshold.