News

Saturday’s opening of the Christmas market on Old Town Square in the centre of Prague drew great crowds of visitors, the Czech News Agency reports. Hundreds were pouring in by the hour and the square was full when the 25m high spruce tree.was lit up. The market opened up this weekend after a two-year-long pandemic hiatus.

Aside from being able to buy gifts and refreshments, visitors to the market are also be able to see a variety of shows, including folklore and dance ensembles from Czechia and abroad. Childrens workshops during mid-day hours are another feature of the program. The market will be open until the Epiphany on January 6.

The Ministry of Interior announced the list of candidates who have fulfilled the necessary legal conditions to be able to run for the position of President of Czechia in next year’s January election.

A total of 21 candidates handed in requests to the ministry. However, only nine passed. These were ANO party leader Andrej Babiš, member of the Chamber of Deputies Jaroslav Bašta, senators Pavel Fischer and Marek Hilšer, former Mendel University rector Danuše Nerudová, retired general Petr Pavel, Denisa Rohanová, who heads ČAP – an association focused on helping debtors, trade union leader Josef Středula, former Charles University rector Tomáš Zima.

Each candidate was required to have fulfilled one of three conditions: the signatures of 10 senators, the signatures of 20 members of the Chamber of Deputies, or 50,000 signatures from ordinary citizens supporting their candidacy.

Those publically known candidates who did not succeed include billionaire Karel Janeček, who drew attention for his expensive and often unorthodox campaign style, or IT businessman Karel Diviš. They both missed the necessary citizen support threshold by less than 2,000 signatures.

Those candidates whom the Ministry of Interior did not deem to have fulfilled the conditions are able to make an appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court by November 30.

Earlier on Friday, Andrej Babiš, who is currently polling in second place behind front-runner Petr Pavel, announced that he will not be taking part in any presidential debates this year. He has also not yet confirmed whether he will be taking part in the January debate between the candidates on Czech Television, saying that he is yet to discuss his campaign strategy with his team

The Chamber of Deputies voted on Friday to completely cancel the electronic cash register system, known as EET, at the end of 2022. Under EET, which was introduced in late 2016 when ANO party leader Andrej Babiš was finance minister, retailers, restaurants and other businesses in the Czech Republic must record their takings in real time into a central state electronic register system.

The proposal to end EET was strongly opposed by the opposition ANO party, which is also the largest party currently in the lower house. However, it received support from both the ruling coalition as well as from the opposition Freedom and Direct Democracy party.  In the end the bill passed with 92 out of the 142 deputies that were present voting in favour.

The head of the ANO party’s deputies club, Alena Schillerová, argued that EET had helped to make the business environment more equal and brought in much needed money to the state. Meanwhile, ruling coalition representatives said that the system simply added a further burden on entrepreneurs with questionable benefits to the state.

The bill will now also have to pass through the Senate before being signed by the president.

Despite last week’s vote in the Chamber of Deputies to designate Russia’s current ruling regime as “terrorist”, Czechia intends to maintain at least basic diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation, Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský has told Czech Radio’s news site iRozhlas.cz. “The fact that we are maintaining basic diplomatic communication, does not mean that we agree with the stances of that state nor that we are interested in expanding any type of cooperation," Mr Lipavský told the news site, adding for context that Czechia also has diplomatic relations with countries such as Iran or Syria.

Alena Schillerová from ANO, the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, which is currently in opposition, agreed that diplomatic relations and the presence of embassies should not be cancelled, stating: “Diplomacy is important and twice as much in times of conflict.”

The vote to declare the current Russian regime as a terrorist one took place in the lower-house of Czech Parliament last Tuesday, with 129 out of the 156 deputies that were present voting in favour of the resolution. 14 deputies, all from the opposition Freedom and Direct Democracy party, voted against. The resolution was made in accordance with an earlier one made by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last month.