News

Wooden breakwaters aimed at protecting Prague’s Charles Bridge from ice and flooding are now back in place following a major renovation job, Novinky.cz reported. New breakwaters, which stand in front of seven of the bridge’s 15 arches, were installed at a cost of CZK 30 million.

The structures replaced ones dating from 2004. The previous breakwaters were destroyed by flooding two years earlier.

The Czech minimum wage, currently at 13,350 crowns, is the lowest in Central Europe, and in terms of buying power, such employees are even worse off, the business daily Hospodářské noviny writes.

Unions are lobbying for the minimum wage to rise to 15,000 crowns next year while employers’ associations propose a rise of just 700 crowns. About 150,000 people are in minimum wage jobs, according to the newspaper.

Czechs’ comparative purchasing power should rise from 66 percent of the average of euro zone countries now to 71 percent next year, according to the Ministry of Finance.

The group A Million Moments for Democracy plans to deliver an ultimatum to Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) in a mass protest march on Saturday: resolve his conflicts of interest and dismiss the justice minister – or resign.

Group leader Mikuláš Minář told at a press conference on Monday protesters want Babiš to exit the holding company Agrofert, which he put in trust funds in but allegedly remains the beneficial owner of, and the numerous media outlets he owns.

If he does not do so, ‘Million Moments’ will stage another wave of weekly protests, Minář told reporters. At the group’s last demonstration in June, more than 280,000 people turned out to call for Babiš to step down. It was the biggest protest since the Velvet Revolution thirty years ago.

The Slovak-born billionaire has been dogged by accusations that a decade ago he illegally obtained 2 million euros in EU subsidies to develop his Stork Nest complex and continues to serve his own business interests, despite placing them in a trust.

Former PM Petr Nečas’s wife has been acquitted along with two other suspects in a case relating to the leak of classified BIS counter-intelligence agency information in 2013 that helped topple the Nečas government.

The Prague court’s verdict is not final and the prosecution has already filed an appeal. The court found insufficient evidence to convict the defendants, and said that while some of their deeds were unethical, they were not criminal.

In 2017, Jana Nečasová, who led the PM’s office before marrying him, was been found guilty of abusing BIS information but given a suspended sentence. So too were influential lobbyist Ivo Rittig and his lawyer David Michal.

The prosecutor sought a 3-year prison sentence for Nečasová, who passed on BIS information to Rittig and Michal, and financial penalties and other conditions be imposed on the two men.