News

Czech health minister Svatopluk Němeček says the option of surgical castration for sexual deviants should be maintained if they choose to undergo such treatment. His comments followed a report on the process in response to criticism from the European Union. The report to the government on Monday pointed out that 88 percent of those questioned said they had volunteered freely for castration and just over half said they would make the same choice again. The report said castration, which stops the influence of the male hormone testosterone, results in repeat sexual offences by only 4 percent of former offenders. Less than 10 such operations are carried out on average in the Czech Republic every year.

Finance minister and leader of the ANO party, Andrej Babiš, says he could seek a revamp of the one year old coalition government agreement. Babiš said he is annoyed by so-called ‘socialist’ measures such as the proposal from the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs to provide substitute alimony for children if the parents default and the proposal to increase tax on banks and banks if tax revenues come in below expectations. Government leaders are due to discuss changes to the agreement on Monday evening. Neither the Social Democrats of prime minister Bohulsav Sobotka or the Christian Democrats are said to be seeking changes.

Face recognition system approved for Prague airport Prague’s Václav Havel airport will be equipped with face recognition security systems for recognizing passengers, the government decided on Monday. The new system, costing around 150 million crowns, should be operational by the end of 2016. Regional airports handling international flights such as Karlovy Vary, Ostrava, Pardubice, and Brno, will later be equipped with similar systems. Face recognition systems are already used at airports in Britain and Germany and by some police forces worldwide to deal with terrorism and international crime.

Access to information about suspect bank accounts and phone numbers will be possible for the Czech domestic security service, BIS, under a proposal approved by the government, the news agency ČTK reported on Monday. Until now, only the tax inspectorate could seek information about private bank accounts. The proposal, aimed at culling information about terrorist networks and organized crime, forms part of a raft of measures aimed at bolstering the capacity of the domestic counter intelligence service, the Security Information Service, in the face of the perceived increase risk of terror attacks.