News

Prague City Hall has said it is planning to file a criminal complaint over the collapse of a three-storey building in the centre of Prague last Friday. The building was under reconstruction at the time and there are indications that safety norms were badly neglected. Several people have come forward to give evidence. Four construction workers were killed in the accident.

The Foreign Ministry plans to close the Czech Consulate in Montreal in a bid to cut costs, and in retaliation to Ottawa’s decision to impose visas for Czechs, the daily Mladá fronta Dnes reported on Monday. The ministry plans to shut embassies in Harare and Luanda as well, the newspaper says. Foreign Minister Jan Kohout has refused to comment on the Canadian consulate closure, all he would say was that cuts were being prepared at diplomatic missions around the world. In May, the Czech Republic closed its honourary consulate in Vancouver. In July, Ottawa re-imposed visa restrictions for Czechs after hundreds of Czech Roma applied for asylum in Canada.

The Social Democrats, meanwhile, have said that they will not support Finance Minister Eduard Janota’s new austerity package for 2011 in its current form. Party leader Jiří Paroubek said that planned cuts in benefits and savings incentives were ‘inadmissible’ and urged the interim government to incorporate progressive taxation into next year’s austerity package. The lower house recently approved an austerity package for 2010, which will cut next year’s budget deficit by 60 billion crowns (3.5 billion USD) to 163 billion crowns. Next year’s budget deficit is predicted to come to 5.3 percent of GDP, with Finance Minister Eduard Janota aiming to keep the budget deficit in 2011 to no more than 5.5 percent of GDP.

In related news, on a state visit to Albania on Monday, Czech President Václav Klaus repeated that he would not sign the Lisbon treaty until the Czech Constitutional Court had reached a verdict on the document. When asked by an Albanian journalist about his opposition to the treaty which could, it was suggested, pave the way for Albanian membership of the EU, the notoriously eurosceptic Czech president said that it was a myth that EU enlargement could only happen after Lisbon ratification. Mr Klaus criticized Brussels bureaucrats who, he said, were intentionally spreading such myths. Mr Klaus is in Albania to discuss Czech-Albanian relations and trade links between the two countries.