News

A bill that compensates clients of bankrupt banks has made it through to the second reading in parliament. Under the bill, affected clients will be compensated up to four million crowns (a little under 165,000 US dollars). The Czech National Bank, the Association of Banks, and the Deposit Insurance Fund, are among the organisations and institutions that oppose the plan. They mainly object to the bill making up for money lost by anonymous depositors.

Several patients' associations and producers of medicine have been calling onto the Health Ministry to revoke an order that transfers the rights to buy some medicine to hospitals. As of January 1, hospitals instead of the country's biggest health insurer, VZP, will be responsible for the acquisition of expensive medicine. Health Minister David Rath made the decision in order to lower the 14 billion crown debt of the VZP, which was put under forced administration earlier this month. Patients fear that hospitals would use the money to settle their debts instead of buy medicine and producers say they would have no guarantee that their medicine will be bought.

Thousands of trade union workers will be gathering in Prague this Saturday to protest against an amendment to a proposed new Labour Code. The bill went through the first reading in parliament but employers and some politicians have been calling for an amendment, fearing it gives trade unions too much power. The trade unionists will be travelling to Prague in hundreds of buses and a special train.

Frantisek Oldrich Kinsky, a member of the old nobility, plans to sue the Czech Republic for billions of crowns after failing to recover extensive family property confiscated after World War II on the grounds of the Benes decrees. Over the past decade Kinsky has filed a total of 157 lawsuits with various Czech courts over property said to be worth 40 billion crowns. It was confiscated on the grounds that Kinsky's father allegedly collaborated with the Nazis. Kinsky's lawyer says the property was confiscated illegally because at the time it was no longer owned by Kinsky senior but by Frantisek Oldrich, who was a minor at the time.