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The Chamber of Deputies has approved a bill on postal voting for Czechs living abroad. The draft law was approved by the votes of the ruling coalition, in the face of protests from the opposition parties who claim that postal voting is vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.

The coalition parties counter that postal voting had been successfully tried and tested in many countries of the world and will make life easier for hundreds of thousands of Czechs who now have to travel long distances to cast their ballot. They would like to see the law in force in time for the 2025 general elections. The bill will now go to the Senate for debate.

There is continuing controversy over the performance of the police in the tragic shooting at the Prague Faculty of Arts last December. Zdeněk Kalvach, a security adviser at Charles University, on Friday rejected police claims that the camera system in the faculty building was outdated and that it would have taken several hours to access the footage. He said police officers could have viewed the footage on the spot within an hour, but did not do so and left to check another site in the city centre where the student who committed the crime was due to attend a class. In reality, the police arrived at the faculty’s main building just one minute after the culprit, who did not start shooting until an hour and a half later. Critics and the families of those killed argue that the police could have prevented the bloodbath, if they had been more thorough. Fourteen people were killed and 25 injured in the shooting.

The Regional Court in Brno has ruled that the Dietrichstein family tomb in Mikulov, South Moravia, belongs to the descendants of this noble family and should be returned to them. Mercedes Dietrichstein has thus won a long-standing court battle for the property. However, her attempts to regain other properties and land that belonged to her father, Alexander Dietrichstein failed. Dietrichstein’s  property was confiscated by the Czechoslovak state immediately after the Second World War on the basis of the Beneš decrees on account of the fact that he was a member of Henlein's Sudeten German Party. Dietrichstein never actively opposed the confiscation of his property.

The Czech opposition ANO party will withdraw from the liberal Renew Europe group in the European Parliament and from the European ALDE party, party leader Andrej Babiš announced at a press conference in Prague on Friday. Babiš said ANO would not be able to fulfil its program in the current faction. The party won seven seats in the elections. ANO will now enter into negotiations on membership in another faction. Babiš said joining the conservative right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists faction is not an option.