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Political analysts have welcomed the end of the drawn out crisis, but they are sceptical with regard to the government's ability to push through badly needed reforms of the health and pension system in the remaining 14 months left to regular parliamentary elections. The Prime Minister has said he is ready to tackle those challenges and will negotiate with the opposition parties in order to secure support for the planned reforms. The leader of the opposition right wing Civic Democratic Party Mirek Topolanek said on Friday that although his party had not supported this Cabinet it was prepared to hold talks on crucial reforms.

Several dozen people on Friday gathered at Lety, the site of a former Nazi concentration camp for Romanies, to attend a commemorative ceremony for the 326 people who died there in the war years. Lety is a sensitive and controversial legacy for Czechs since the camp was staffed solely by Czech guards and was initially set up by the Czech puppet government early in the Nazi occupation. Adding insult to injury, the communist authorities later built a pig farm on the site of the former camp, which has not been removed to this day. The European Parliament recently approved a resolution urging the Czech government to have the farm relocated as quickly as possible.

The Czech Anti-Monopoly Office has launched administrative proceedings against three of the country's biggest banks. Ceska Sporitelna, Komercni Banka, and CSOB are suspected of concluding a cartel agreement on bank charges. The three banks charge much higher fees than in most other EU member states. If the banks are proven guilty, they can face a fine of up to ten million Czech crowns (some 420,000 US dollars) or amounting to ten percent of profits recorded in 2004.

The lower house of the Czech Parliament has proposed to stop the activities or dissolve some 54 political parties and movements. They are said to have broken the law by failing to forward the entire or part of their business management reports for 2004 to the lower house. The lower house has therefore asked the government to propose to the Supreme Administrative Court to end the activities of 38 of the political groupings and dissolve 16 of them, which are no longer active. The parties and movements involved - some took part in the last elections - include the ultra-right Republicans of Miroslav Sladek and the Roma Civic Initiative.