News

People from the Czech Republic were allegedly among the users of a widespread international child pornography network that was broken up by the German police in April, the iDnes.cz web site reported Monday. In cooperation with their German colleagues, the Czech police are reported to have carried out several dozen raids confiscating 27 computers and more than 1700 CDs, DVDs, flash discs and memory cards. According to iDnes, searches were carried out across the country. Police have not revealed how many Czechs are suspected of having been involved in the child pornography network. According to the BBC, the international child pornography ring had links to Canada and the USA.

The Chief Justice of the Czech Constitutional Court, Pavel Rychetský, told Czech TV on Sunday that once the Lisbon treaty had been approved by Parliament, President Václav Klaus was obliged to put his signature to it and complete its ratification, or ask the Constitutional Court to review it. The Lisbon treaty was approved by both chambers of the Czech Parliament earlier this year but President Klaus said he would only consider putting his signature to it after another referendum on the treaty is held in Ireland. Justice Rychetský said however that whenever the Constitution sets down no particular time limit for the president to ratify international treaties, the head of state must act without delay.

Several Civic Democrat senators are considering petitioning the Constitutional Court to review whether the treaty is in line with Czech law. The court already examined six articles of the treaty in 2008 and said they did not contradict the Czech Constitution.

Leaders of the Czech Republic’s two strongest political parties, the Civic Democrats and the Social Democrats, told Czech TV on Sunday that their MPs would support the interim government of Jan Fischer in the upcoming vote of confidence scheduled for June 7. The chair of the Social Democrats, Jiří Paroubek, said his party’s MPs were going to support the government in spite of the fact that they don’t agree with several of the cabinet’s programme priorities. For his part, Civic Democrat leader Mirek Topolánek noted that convincing some of Civic Democrat MPs to support the government would not be easy.

The interim government of PM Jan Fischer took office earlier this month after the cabinet of Mirek Toplánek fell in a vote of no-confidence. It is set to ask the lower house of Parliament for confidence on June 7, a day after the election to the EP.

Agriculture ministers of 17 EU countries arrived in Brno on Sunday for a three-day informal conference on the future of the bloc’s agriculture policy, held as part of the Czech EU presidency. Among other issues, the ministers will debate the system of direct payments to agriculture producers in individual EU countries. The system currently grants higher subsidies to farmers from the old EU states, which is something the Czech Republic and several other new members of the EU would like to change.