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Czech Transport Minister Vít Bárta has sacked the head of the country’s Road and Motorway Directorate and immediately named his successor. The outgoing head of the directorate, Alfred Brunclík, was punished for including a key bridge on the route of the D47 motorway among construction work that the directorate planned to freeze due to cost cutting. The D47 links Ostrava with the rest of the country and continues to the Polish border. His successor, Jiří Švorc, said the directorate would seek maximum savings not just from ongoing construction projects but also operating costs. The directorate has long been under fire for the high construction costs of Czech motorways compared with others in Europe.

The Ministry of the Interior has presented its plans for saving 8.3 billion crowns. Speaking to reporters on Monday afternoon, Interior Minister Radek John said that the priorities were to save on operational expenditures and investments, and decreased pay for police and firemen. However, costs would be cut he said from all areas of the ministry. Other measures will include reducing police activity abroad, cancelling plans for police and fire department buildings and equipment, and revising all e-government projects. Mr John also said that effective policemen should have more money in later years in spite of planned cuts to state employees’ salaries, saying that their bonuses would be reinforced from the salaries of the 1,500 officers who leave service each year. Nonetheless, the minister allowed that the next year would be “painful” for police and fire department workers.

Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek has spoken out against the prime minister’s disapproval of a plan to finance flood relief from income tax breaks. Mr Kalousek said that the chairmen of the coalition parties had agreed on his ministry’s flood tax two weeks earlier, and said the PM’s about-face on the issue was absolutely inappropriate in a coalition. Following floods in north Bohemia two weeks ago, Mr Kalousek said all working Czechs would contribute to a flood relief fund in the form of a CZK 100-a-month cut in income tax breaks, a move some critics slammed as nothing less than a new tax. On Sunday, Prime Minister Nečas said he had a number of reservations regarding the flood tax, and referenced a pre-election promise not to increase direct taxes.

The state body for foods inspection has forced two Czech wine producers to recall hundreds of thousands of litres of wine after the companies were unable to prove the origin of the grapes used. Inspectors found that České vinařské závody and Vinium Velké Pavlovice had used over a million kilos of grapes that were of unknown origin but used in products labelled as domestic wine. The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority said that it intends to thoroughly inspect other wine producers for violations they say are damaging both to consumers and honest domestic wine growers.