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10/27/2009
Meanwhile, another poll suggests the leader of TOP 09 Karel Schwarzenberg is the most popular politician in the Czech Republic. In a CVVM poll carried out this month the blue-blooded former foreign minister had an approval rating of 43 percent. Second in the survey was the Social Democrats former finance minister Bohuslav Sobotka, with 38 percent approval. TOP 09’s Miroslav Kalousek, also a former foreign minister, tied with the Greens former education minister Ondřej Liška in third place: both had approval ratings of 31 percent in the poll.
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10/27/2009
Ten people have contracted swine flu at a secondary school in České Budějovice, a spokesperson for the regional hygiene authority said on Tuesday. The 10 include two employees and eight pupils at the school; they were found to have the disease after a school trip to Bavaria. The freshly detected cases are not serious and all of those infected are recovering at home. Last week the Czech Republic saw its first swine flu death, when a woman with heart problems died in Karlovy Vary after catching the H1N1 virus.
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10/27/2009
Czech President Václav Klaus is set to hand out 23 state honours on Wednesday evening, which is the day of Czech statehood, marking the 91st anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia. Mladá fronta Dnes reported that Mr Klaus had been expected to bestow more honours this year, given that it is the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism. Some names of recipients have leaked this year, including the singer Karel Gott. Six hundred people have been invited to Prague Castle’s Vladislav Hall for Wednesday’s awards ceremony.
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10/27/2009
Czech dairy farmers are planning to pour half a million litres of milk onto the ground at eight locations around the country on Thursday, in protest at what they say is the low price they are currently receiving. Farmer’s group representative Kamil Vystavěl told the CTK news agency that the situation in the milk business was serious and had not been addressed for over a year; he said some producers could go out of business due to the low prices.
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10/27/2009
The Czech writer Miroslav Švandrlík has died at the age of 77. He was one of the country’s most popular humorous authors, perhaps best known for Černí baroni (Black Barons). The novel depicts life in a section of the army created in the 1950s as a kind of prison for people the communist regime considered unreliable. Švandrlík was himself in that “service”. The book Černí baroni was banned by the communist authorities and could only be read in a samizdat version. However, after 1989 a film version became a big success, leading to a popular TV series.
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10/26/2009
The Constitutional Court will hold a public hearing on Tuesday on the compatibility of the EU’s Lisbon treaty with the Czech constitution and Czech law. The court is addressing a complaint put forward by a group of right-wing senators last month. The senators have challenged that the treaty, which is aimed at reforming the running of the 27-member EU, will unduly limit Czech sovereignty through the transfer of power to Brussels. The Czech Republic is the only member country to not yet have ratified the document, although it was approved by both houses of Parliament. President Václav Klaus has conditioned his signing of the treaty to the country’s exemption from the Charter of Fundamental Rights (over fears the document could pave the way for property claims by the country’s former ethnic German minority, expelled after World War II). The Constitutional Court’s General Secretary Tomáš Langášek has said it is impossible to anticipate whether the court will issue a ruling on Tuesday or adjourn the ruling until a later date.
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10/26/2009
The Czech government has decided not to sell its majority stake in the national carrier, Czech Airlines. It based its decision on Monday on a recommendation by the Finance Minister Eduard Janota. The decision means that a 92 percent share in the troubled carrier will remain in state hands. The Czech-Icelandic consortium of Unimex/Travel Service was the only remaining bidder in the tender, after Air France-KLM dropped out. Czech Airlines has posted record losses this year, leading to a new CEO, Miroslav Dvořák, being named last week. He has negotiated wage cuts with the unions.
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10/26/2009
The Czech state attorney in Louny has stopped the criminal prosecution of nine suspects in connection with an illegal waste dump uncovered in Libčeves, north Bohemia, three years ago. Several thousand tonnes of waste, it was found then, had been illegally imported from neighbouring Germany. A spokesman for the state attorney’s office confirmed that overall 31 people had originally been investigated, including the head of the German firm suspected of damages. The Czech state attorney chose to drop further proceedings due to legal technicalities as well as after reviewing an assessment by the German authorities, the spokesman said.
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10/26/2009
The Czech weekly Týden has reported that the government no longer intends to sell the state-owned Štiřín Chateau (outside of the Czech capital). Under the previous government, the Foreign Ministry ordered expert assessment of the property at the cost of 600 thousand crowns, the weekly noted. The property is valued at 650 million crowns (around 38 million US dollars). Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiří Beneš told Týden that the sale of the property was no longer a priority, following the economic downturn. If the government opts to sell at a later date, a new assessment will be needed, an expert told the weekly.
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10/26/2009
Kenneth Clarke, a highly-placed member of Great Britain’s Conservative Party as well as that party’s shadow finance minister, has criticised Czech President Václav Klaus over his reasoning on the Lisbon treaty. In the Sunday edition of The Times Mr Clarke said that the president’s assessment that the treaty could lead to property restitution claims by ethnic Germans - expelled from Czech soil after World War II - were “the most ridiculous he had heard”. Václav Klaus has demanded an exemption for the Czech Republic from the Charter of Fundamental Rights to address such concerns. Mr Klaus’s critics charge that the president, a strong opponent of “Lisbon”, has simply sought to delay ratification for as long as possible. In the past, the Conservative Party's head David Cameron said he would call a referendum on the Lisbon treaty if the issue had not been resolved by next year.
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