News

A further loosening of coronavirus restrictions went into effect in the Czech Republic on Monday, June 22.  The number of people permitted at public gatherings has been raised to 5,000. Swimming pools, zoos, museums, galleries and castles are no longer required to limit the number of visitors and people no longer need to observe social distancing rules.

The requirement to wear face masks in shops, institutions and on public transport will end on July 1, with the exception of high-risk areas such as Prague, Karvina and Frýdek-Místek.

The extended validity of drivers’ licenses and technical safety inspections of cars by seven months, due to the coronavirus pandemic, as announced by the European Union earlier this month, has not been adopted by all member states and may cause problems for people travelling around Europe by car, the Czech Transport Ministry warned on Monday.

According to the EU regulation it should have been possible to travel around the EU without these valid documents. However, a total of eight countries have rejected extending the validity of drivers’ licenses (Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) and 21 countries have rejected extending the validity of the bi-annual technical inspection. Only Austria, Italy, Sweden, Cyprus, Portugal and the Czech Republic have fully accepted the extensions.

Police are investigating a man who set fire to the newly-erected replica of the Marian Column on Prague’s Old Town Square on Sunday. According to police spokesman Jan Rybansky the man defended his action by saying the authorities should never have allowed the controversial column to be replaced. He could face up to two years in jail for vandalism.

The column was erected in 1650 as an expression of gratitude for the salvation of Prague from the Swedish army at the close of the Thirty Years’ War. But for many ordinary Czechs, it represented the enforced re-Catholisation by Austria's Habsburg rulers of a country that venerated the religious reformer Jan Hus.

The original was torn down by an angry mob shortly after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia. The decision of Prague City Council to allow a replica to be put up in its place sparked heated disputes.

The flash floods that hit the southern and north-eastern parts of the country at the weekend claimed four lives, the ctk news agency reported on Monday. One of the victims was an eight-year-old girl who was out on a raft with her father and older sister. Police are still searching for the body of a woman who is believed to have drowned in the Bruntál region on Saturday.

Clean-up operations are underway in towns and villages where water levels have receded but flood alerts remain in place in the Pardubice region in east Bohemia and in the Frýdlant region in northern Bohemia. More rainfall is expected in the coming days, particularly in the Beskydy mountains in the north-east. People have been warned not to take risks.