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02/05/2023
The Czech economy is in a period of recession-inflation, characterised by high inflation and slow economic growth at the same time, economist Jan Švejnar said on Czech Television on Sunday in a discussion between himself and two other economists. He further stated Czechia and Spain are the only countries currently in recession in Europe, and only three countries have high core inflation (which does not include fluctuating food and energy prices): Czechia, Poland and Hungary.
Fellow economist Jan Gregor pointed out that the situation is made all the more difficult by the fact that the whole of Europe is in a period of economic decline. Mojmír Hampl added that, based on historical experience, Czechia is not good at handling economic crises and the effects of such crises are worse here than in other countries.
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02/05/2023
Representatives of four or five dozen Czech companies will be in the parliamentary delegation that will visit Taiwan at the end of March, the speaker of the lower chamber, Markéta Pekarová Adamová, told CNN Prima News on Sunday. The delegation will also include the director of the Czech National Museum, Michal Lukeš, and representatives from the fields of science and research.
China, which considers Taiwan to be an integral part of its territory, has already protested against Ms Pekarová Adamová's planned visit and called for its cancellation.
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02/05/2023
Pavel Rychetský, the current president of the Czech Constitutional Court, said on Czech television that the new president could, and even has to, ignore the decision of his predecessor if he appointed the head of the Constitutional Court at a time when the position is filled. Mr Rychetský said that the president cannot appoint someone to a position that is filled, adding that such a proposition is absurd.
Current president Miloš Zeman has previously stated that he intends to appoint the new head of the Constitutional Court, although the mandate of the current president Pavel Rychetský is due to end in August during the presidency of Petr Pavel, while Zeman's term ends in March.
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02/05/2023
Monday is expected to be cold and overcast but with no precipitation. Daytime temperatures are expected to range between 0 and minus 8, with temperatures predicted to drop below minus 12 degrees overnight between Sunday and Monday in certain parts of the country, particularly the northern and eastern regions.
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02/05/2023
The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute issued an alert on Sunday for extreme cold weather with a risk of frostbite on unprotected parts of the body, which will affect mainly the Bohemian-Moravian highlands, and the north, east and northeast of the country. Temperatures are predicted to drop below minus 12 degrees on Sunday night, with the freezing weather expected to last until at least Wednesday morning.
The warning applies to the Hradec Králové, Vysočina and Pardubice regions, and from Tuesday also to the Liberec region. Temperatures well below freezing will occur mainly at night and in the morning.
Small children, the elderly and the sick are recommended to limit their time outside, and everyone is recommended to protect themselves with several layers of warm clothing and suitable footwear.
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02/05/2023
TOP 09, one of the three parties in the ruling government coalition, supports raising the retirement age from 65 to 68, party leader Markéta Pekarová Adamová said on CNN Prima News on Sunday. She stated that comprehensive pension reform is needed so that the pension system does not collapse.
According to Ms Pekarová Adamová, the coalition has not yet agreed on the reform and raising the retirement age is only one of the options. She said, however, that if the retirement age were to be raised, it would only affect people under 40 or 45.
Prime Minister Petr Fiala said that at the moment, there is one person working for every three pensioners, and spoke about the need to strengthen pro-family policy in order to balance the demographic curve.
The opposition SPD leader, Radim Fiala, said his party does not agree with increasing the retirement age to 68 instead of the current 65.
More than 952,000 men and more than 1.4 million women currently receive old-age pensions from the social security system.
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02/05/2023
Controls on the Czech-Slovak border, which Czechia introduced last September due to a sharp increase in the number of migrants heading to Western Europe via Slovakia and the Czech Republic, have ended as of Sunday. It is now possible for tourists to freely cross the land border once again, which, although Czechia and Slovakia are both part of the Schengen area, was not possible when the border controls were in place.
However, checks on trains on the Slovak side of the border will continue, and police officers will continue to surveil the border area on and off the roads at random.
When the controls were at their height, soldiers and customs officers were employed to help. However, the situation has since improved, and the government therefore gradually reduced the number of checks and has now cancelled them altogether. According to Interior Minister Vít Rakušan, the police were catching 400 migrants a day last September, while now it is often just individual people. The vast majority, 93 percent, of migrants detained last year were Syrians, mostly young men.
Since the controls were introduced last September, the police have checked a total of 3.2 million people crossing the border, detained 9,660 illegal migrants and 142 people suspected of smuggling, and denied entry to 2,636 people.
The government has used up four months of the six-month period during which Schengen countries can decide to use temporary border controls.
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02/04/2023
Sunday is expected to be cold and overcast, with daytime temperatures between -5 and -1 degrees Celsius. The strong winds and snowfall that parts of the country have been experiencing over the last two days are predicted to have mostly subsided by Sunday.
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02/04/2023
Thousands of people flocked to Open Hangar Day at the military reserve airport in Líně near Plzěn on Saturday, where Volkswagen is considering building a so-called "gigafactory" for electric car batteries. The organisers of the event say it is not a protest against the construction of the factory, but is rather intended to support the preservation of the airport and to make the public realize how sad it would be if the region were to lose it.
Transport Minister Martin Kupka also came to the site at the invitation of the organisers. He said that the construction of the factory is a great opportunity for Czechia and the transformation of its car industry.
The airport is closely associated with the history of aviation in West Bohemia, which started in Plzěn after the First World War. According to the organisers, the large number of visitors, estimated at around 15,000, is proof of the public's support and interest in the airport.
Volkswagen is due to announce by the end of March whether it will build the factory in Líně or rather in one of the other possible locations in either Poland, Slovakia or Hungary. Construction is slated to start at the end of 2024.
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02/04/2023
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the Economist Group, which publishes the weekly newspaper The Economist, has increased Czechia's ranking in its 2022 Democracy Index by four places compared to 2021.
The index measures the state of democracy in 167 countries and territories around the world by giving them a score and dividing them into four categories — full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. Czechia is classed as a "democracy with flaws", but has the highest score out of this group of countries together with Greece.
Czechia improved its ranking to 25th place and received a score of 7.97, where a score higher than eight is required to move to the "full democracy" classification.
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