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03/10/2009
The Czech EU presidency on Tuesday helped broker a long-sought deal on reduced sales tax on certain services in the EU, as Germany yielded to French pressure to allow less tax to be charged in restaurants. The issue of whether EU countries can apply reduced value added tax rates for specific labour-intensive industries has been one of the longest running unsettled dossiers in Brussels. In the latest effort to break the deadlock, the European Union's Czech presidency put a compromise proposal on the table for the finance ministers' meeting, which was then heavily revised before an agreement could be reached. In addition to including restaurants on the reduced VAT list, the deal dropped a 2010 deadline for the expiration of current exemptions on window-washing, hair-dressing, building renovations and bicycle and home repairs.
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03/10/2009
The future of the Czech energy industry must be linked with nuclear power, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek said at a conference on the future of the Czech energy sector on Tuesday. The prime minister said nuclear power was essential for further development, although other low-emission technologies such as hydroelectric power stations should also get support. Mr. Topolánek has long advocated a growth in power production from nuclear sources on the grounds that it would help cut energy prices and would be the best way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The question of the country’s long term energy policy has split the coalition government since the Green Party is strongly opposed to the further development of nuclear energy in the Czech Republic.
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03/10/2009
The Green Party of the Czech governing coalition is facing a wave of resignations by rank-and-file members who are dissatisfied with the party leadership. Close to half of the party’s registered members have left the Greens in the wake of a stormy confrontation between its leadership and an opposition fraction over the weekend. Four members were expelled for openly opposing the leadership, triggering calls for a new party which would be more active in support of Green issues. The Interior Ministry has confirmed that it received an official request for the registration of a new Green party with a thousand signatures from potential members. Dana Kuchtová, one of the four expelled rebels, has distanced herself from the initiative, saying there was not enough room for two Green parties on the Czech political scene.
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03/10/2009
A Czech police officer is running for the extreme-right National Party in the June elections to the European Parliament, the daily Lidové noviny reported on Tuesday. A spokesman for the police said that his superiors were aware of the fact and did not consider it a problem since the officer was not actually a member of the National Party. The officer, Jaroslav Bernásek, said he had been offered the chance to run and was not remotely interested in the party’s ideology. He denied that his candidacy was in conflict with his profession.
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03/10/2009
The Czech transport and environment ministries have moved to stop the felling of trees along state roads until a close inspection has been made of the country’s road avenues and the trees marked out for felling. Czech environment inspectors recently uncovered plans by road maintenance to fell some 9,000 trees along state roads in the course of this year. The news produced an outcry from the public and led the two ministries to step up controls.
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03/10/2009
A regional court has ruled that Třebíč Hospital was fully entitled to sack the nurse who was responsible for a highly publicized swap of two baby girls in 2006. The swap was uncovered nine months later when one of the girl’s fathers asked for a DNA test. The court ruled that although there was no evidence to suggest that the nurse in question actually swapped the babies, her negligence in performing her duties led to the fact that the mix-up was not uncovered immediately. The nurse had protested against her dismissal, saying she had been selected as a scapegoat by the hospital management which had irreparably damaged her reputation.
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03/10/2009
An opinion survey conducted in connection with the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Czech Republic’s entry to NATO indicates that 76 percent of Czechs approve of the country’s membership in the alliance. The majority of Czechs see NATO membership as the best possible security guarantee the country can have. Those against are mainly older people and Communist Party supporters.
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03/08/2009
A man shot dead his former girlfriend, her parents and another man at a family celebration in a restaurant in Petřvald, north Moravia on Saturday night, a police spokesperson said. The assailant then turned his gun on himself and is now in hospital in a serious condition. Police said the man, who is 41 and believed to be from the former Yugoslavia, immediately started shooting as soon as he arrived in the restaurant at around 1 am.
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03/08/2009
The Czech foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, has backed Switzerland in a row with other European countries over Swiss banking secrecy, the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag reported. Mr Schwarzenberg, whose country holds the presidency of the European Union, said a couple of million euros certainly escaped one tax coffer or another, but he said the country’s independence and the tradition of an autonomous and neutral Switzerland’s had a greater value. Due to the financial crisis France and Germany have proposed new measures against non-cooperative tax centres and have demanded new criteria to determine whether Switzerland should be added to the list, Reuters reported.
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03/08/2009
Four rebel members of the Greens were expelled at a meeting of the party’s national council on Sunday. MPs Olga Zubová and Věra Jakubová, former education minister Dana Kuchtová and Martin Čáslavka were thrown out of the smallest party in the governing coalition for setting up a fraction named Democratic Appeal in opposition to chairman Martin Bursík. Party officials said the rebels had overstepped the mark by appearing in public, using the party emblem and setting up their own website.
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