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11/25/2008
In more business news, the Czech Republic will not decide upon a date for introducing the common European currency until next year, the national coordinator for euro adoption, Oldřich Dědek, has said. Last week, the governor of the Czech National Bank Zdeněk Tůma also indicated that the debate on euro adoption should be postponed until next year. Exporters such as Škoda Auto have been urging the government to lay out a roadmap towards euro adoption as quickly as possible. On Tuesday, Oldřich Dědek said he first wanted to see how the euro weathered the current global financial crisis. It looks increasingly unlikely that Czechs will adopt the single European currency before 2012 at the earliest.
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11/25/2008
In related news, the head of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, Pervenche Beres, has said that the Czech government could speed up economic reform by adopting a timetable for euro introduction. Speaking on a visit to Prague, Mrs Beres said that implementing a timetable for euro adoption would in turn place an added onus upon reforms being passed. The MEP also emphasized the importance of the common European currency in the current financial crisis, calling the euro an ‘anchor’ stabilizing the economies of countries in which it was used.
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11/25/2008
Directors of the Simon Weisenthal Centre – an international Jewish human rights organisation – have written to the Czech Interior Ministry regarding riots recently held by neo-Nazis in north Bohemia. The organisation’s head of international relations, Shimon Samuels, wrote in a letter that when all Czechs are ‘children or grandchildren of the victims of totalitarian regimes’ it is ‘incomprehensible’ that a minority, this time the Romany, are being attacked in such a way on Czech soil. Mr Samuels added that the way the government now deals with the riots will prove a ‘litmus test’ which will set the tone for the country’s upcoming EU presidency. Mr Samuels voiced his concern that members of the Czech Republic’s military and police force were reported to have been involved in the riots.
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11/25/2008
The ruling Civic Democrats have called for deputies to hold an extraordinary meeting after MPs failed on Tuesday to agree upon an agenda for their last gathering for 2008. After two hours of discussion, MPs were still unable to reach a consensus and the proposed agenda was vetoed. With next year’s budget and the future of several foreign military missions still to be debated, the Civic Democrats have called for the Lower House to meet extraordinarily on up to three occasions before the year is out. The first of these meetings is tabled to take place next week. MPs’ failure to agree upon an agenda sparked ire on Tuesday, with the leader of the Greens, Martin Bursík, calling the situation ‘almost inexcusable’ and ‘extremely serious’.
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11/25/2008
The head of the Czech army Vlastimil Picek has urged the government to highlight the overlap between some EU and NATO military missions during the Czech Republic’s presidency of the European Union starting in January next year. Mr Picek said on Tuesday that small countries such as the Czech Republic found it difficult to bear the financial burden of participating in two missions in one country, and urged Czech Defence Minister Vlasta Parkanová to attempt to restructure some of the EU’s defence activities during the country’s six months at the helm. For her part, Mrs Parkanová said that she would be focusing on widening some of the EU’s foreign missions during the Czech EU presidency – in particular, the defence minister said she aimed to fortify the EU’s presence in Afghanistan. In response to Mr Picek’s request, the defence minister said the Czech military budget would be raised next year by 1.5 billion crowns to nearly 55.5 billion crowns (2.9 billion USD).
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11/25/2008
The leading Civic Democrats suffered a humiliating defeat in last month’s regional elections mainly because they lost the support of middle-class voters, a study conducted for Mladá fronta Dnes suggests. Researcher Daniel Kunštát said that the Civic Democrats failed to secure the votes of those earning average and slightly-above-average incomes, both groups which traditionally tend to vote for the centre-right party. The survey suggested that losses were highest amongst teachers, healthcare workers and civil servants, while those who earned on average above 40,000 crowns (just over 2,000 USD) a month remained faithful to the Civic Democrats.
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11/25/2008
A 22-metre-high Christmas tree was erected on Prague’s Old Town Square on Monday night. The tree will be illuminated on Saturday evening, at the opening of the Christmas market to be held on the square. The spruce tree came from the Krkonoše Mountains in the north of the country, and will be one of the most visible symbols of Christmas in the Czech capital. Organisers of the market said that they had taken special care to anchor the tree firmly into the ground after six people were injured in 2003, when the tree blew over in high winds.
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11/24/2008
President Václav Klaus on Monday indicated that he will put off signing the Lisbon treaty until it has been ratified by Ireland. Mr. Klaus, who sees the treaty as a “fatal restriction of national sovereignty” said in an interview for Radio Česko that any discussion on the treaty’s future was pointless until the Constitutional Court ruled as to whether its adoption would not violate the Czech constitutional order. Mr. Klaus also noted that without Ireland, the treaty was not viable and that he had no reason to put his own signature to it until it had a realistic chance of being adopted. Apart from Ireland, which rejected the treaty in a national referendum in June, the Czech Republic is the only EU member not to have voted on the document. Political commentators note that this could seriously complicate the country’s EU presidency in the first half of 2009.
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11/24/2008
The Czech Constitutional Court is expected to rule at a public hearing on Tuesday on whether the Lisbon treaty is in line with the Czech constitutional order. A positive ruling could unfreeze the ratification process in Parliament, while a negative result could seriously complicate matters, since Parliament would first need to change the constitution order. Even in the event of a positive ruling, the prime minister has expressed serious doubts that the treaty could be ratified in time for the Czech Republic’s EU presidency starting January 1st.
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11/24/2008
The Czech government will ask the Supreme Court to outlaw the far-right Workers’ Party on the grounds of its undemocratic statutes and activities, the minister for ethnic minorities and human rights, Dzamila Stehlikova said on Monday. The move has come in the wake of the country’s worst neo-Nazi violence in the town of Litvinov and is said to have received strong backing from the prime minister. The leader of the extreme right Workers’ Party Tomáš Vandas said that there are no legal grounds for such a decision and told the media that if the party were outlawed it would simply re-emerge under a new name.
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