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The Constitutional Court is to review two laws which ban children who have not been vaccinated against serious vaccine-preventable diseases from attending pre-school facilities. The law on public health stipulates that in order to protect others these institutions can only enrol children who have the shots recommended by the national immunization schedule. The court is to deliberate the matter on the grounds of a complaint from parents who feel that this is discriminatory. An increasing number of parents are refusing to get their children vaccinated on the basis of studies which suggest this could put them at risk.

Police are searching for a hoax caller whose threats have closed the central bank’s Ostrava headquarters three times in as many weeks. The latest incident happened place on Monday morning when the building was evacuated in the wake of an anonymous bomb threat. The police are investigating the case as scaremongering under which the culprit could get up to five years in prison.

Minister for human rights, equal rights and legislation Jiří Dienstbier is due in Brussels Monday to try and win European Commission support for Czech proposals on a new civil service law. The Commission has said that billions of crowns in EU funding depends on whether the Czech Republic implements an acceptable framework for an independent and professional civil service. It is the last country in the EU to have put such a framework in place. The government has put its proposal to parliament with most of the provisions set to take effect from 2016. However, the Commission is said to be concerned that some of the measures will not be in force until a year later in 2017. Amongst others, Dienstbier is due to meet Social Affairs Laslo Andor with an overall agreement on how to use social and investment funds up till 2020 one of the issues.

In an interview on Czech Television Sunday, Lech Walesa repeated warnings about the lack of solidarity in dealing with worldwide and European problems. The situation in Belarus and willingness to tackle ecological and climate problems, were examples, he said. Walesa also attacked the level of democracy in his own country saying that a democratic framework was in place but apathy reigned and the supplementary steps to make the democratic system work well were lacking. Former Czechoslovak prime minister and leader of the Czech Senate Petr Pithart echoed some of the criticisms, highlighting for example the Ukraine crisis and France’s willingness to sell large warships to Russia and Germany’s former approval for gas pipelines from Russia that would bypass Poland.