News

During Friday’s naming ceremony at Prague Castle, President Zeman wished Mr. Sobotka success in forming a “professional team based on expert knowledge and life experience”. Mr. Zeman is set to hold individual meetings with the prime minister designate’s ministerial candidates in the coming weeks and has said he could name a new government by the end of the month. However, he has raised questions over the suitability of a number of cabinet nominees.

The Social Democrats’ human rights and family spokeswoman Michaela Marksová Tominová is in the frame to become minister of labour and social affairs in the emerging Czech government. The party’s leaders selected her after their previous nominee withdrew citing family tragedy. The Social Democrats are set to have eight seats in the next cabinet, alongside ANO with six and the Christian Democrats with three.

A man suspected of being the head of a so-called “spirits mafia” trading in illegal booze offered a police officer a CZK 10 million bribe, police said on Friday. They accused Radek Březina of making the offer during questioning last year and said he had also attempted to bribe witnesses with tens of millions of crowns. The police made the statements during a news conference in the Moravian city of Olomouc presenting information on an operation this week in which 15 people were charged with illegal trading in spirits. The gang cost the state at least CZK 3 billion in lost tax revenues, police said.

The Prague Short Film Festival got underway on Thursday evening. Eighteen movies of 30 minutes or under are in competition in the event, which is organised by the same people as the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. In total 66 shorts from 14 countries are being screened over four days.