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09/23/2009
President Klaus on Tuesday disavowed certain remarks published by the US daily Washington Post earlier this week and repeated in the Czech press. Mr Klaus was quoted as saying that regulation in the Czech Republic was greater now than it had been 20 years ago prior to the fall of communism; he says that his actual point was that there is more regulation in the country at present than he would have expected at that time, and that the misquote is damaging to him as a head of state. Mr Klaus is currently in the United States attending the General Assembly of the United Nations.
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09/23/2009
The government has filed a proposal for the banning of the extreme-right Workers’ Party with the Supreme Administrative Court. The court’s spokesman, Michal Lovritš, said it would deal with the proposal on September 30. The previous government made a proposal to the same end earlier this year, however it was dismissed by the court on the grounds that it was poorly prepared and did not include the necessary evidence. Both the police and the Czech intelligence agency BIS consider the party an extremist organisation of right-wing radicals.
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09/23/2009
Police in Prague have arrested a 41-year-old Chinese woman sought for ordering the murder of the wife of a well-known journalist. The court will now decide whether to keep the woman in detention and whether she will be extradited to China, where she faces life imprisonment. According to the Czech police spokeswoman, the suspect had a long-term relationship with the man in question before leaving for five years to the Czech Republic. After allegedly making a promise to wait for her, the journalist married another woman, who was murdered in January. The suspect’s involvement was apparently discovered when the murderers themselves were arrested and confessed.
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09/23/2009
The Constitutional Court has abolished part of a legislative act allowing authorities to revoke the passports of suspects in criminal cases. In its ruling the court stated that the law denies such people the opportunity for revocations to be reviewed judicially. Legislators will now have until the end of next year to modify the act, until which time the travel documents of suspects facing three years of prison or more may be revoked by the police or the courts.
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09/23/2009
As the Czech Republic prepares for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI at the weekend so a list of splendid gifts from the country’s religious and political figures has taken shape. Cardinal Miroslav Vlk has a mass bowl inscribed with Czech and papal symbols for the pontiff, while President Václav Klaus intends to offer His Holiness with two items made by prestigious Czech manufacturers. The Christian Democratic Party announced that they would be presenting the pope with a truly earthly gift, a rock from a monastery that the communist regime used as a work camp for political prisoners.
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09/22/2009
Czech President Václav Klaus on Tuesday told the American newspaper Washington Post that he sees the European Union as a greater threat than Russia. Currently in New York for a summit on climate change, Mr Klaus said that while Russia today plays nothing like the role in daily Czech affairs that the Soviet Union did, the EU threatens the ability of the Czech Republic to maintain its identity as a state. This, the president said, was the rationale for his opposition to the Lisbon Treaty, among other integrative processes. The president also criticised the “frustrating” amount of regulation in the Czech Republic at present, saying it was greater now than it had been 20 years ago prior to the fall of communism. The political system in Russia, he said, and freedom in general is currently at its highest point “in the last two millennia”.
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09/22/2009
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout met with his US counterpart Hillary Clinton on Monday. Discussions on the margins of the UN General Assembly centred on what shape relations between the two countries should now take after the US decision last week not to go ahead with its original missile defence plans in the Czech Republic and Poland. Mr Kohout said after the meeting that the two sides had examined civil areas where they could cooperate in the future and gave the example of stepped up Czech participation in US space programmes. Mrs Clinton mentioned broader research and development cooperation. She said on Friday that the two countries are frontrunners for a mobile missile defence system which the US would now like to roll-out in Europe.
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09/22/2009
Farming revenues for 2009 are expected to drop by 20 billion crowns, the Agricultural Association of the Czech Republic has reported. In spite of optimistic economic forecasts made during the summer, the year will thus be the first to end in a loss for Czech farmers since the country’s accession to the European Union in 2004. The major factor is the sharply reduced prices of milk and grains, which alone account for more than a 75% of the dive. The Czech Agrarian Chamber originally forecast a two-billion-crown profit for Czech farmers; the chamber’s chairman Jan Veleba now says he did not want to insinuate a loss prematurely to avoid banks’ toughening up loan conditions for farmers. In 2008 Czech agriculture recorded profits of 9.7 billion crowns.
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09/22/2009
The British daily Telegraph reports that the constitutional complaint brought against the Lisbon Treaty by a group of Czech senators may allow British conservatives the time to hold a referendum. Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer has reportedly warned EU leaders in private that the challenge could create a long delay for the treaty’s ratification in the Czech Republic. Should that delay outlast the current British government, and the British Conservative Party win elections tentatively planned for May, ratification of the Lisbon Treaty would face yet another major hurdle, as the Conservatives have pledged to put the treaty to a public vote. The other countries yet to pass the Lisbon Treaty – Ireland, Germany and Poland - are expected to do so in the coming months; the fact that the Czech Republic is behind in the process has been a major issue in the country’s EU relations.
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09/22/2009
The Czech caretaker government will negotiate with political parties on Tuesday to try and seal a deal on a budget for 2010. The government on Monday unanimously backed a cost-saving and tax-raising budget proposal for 2010 tabled by Finance Minister Eduard Janota. Mr Janota’s package is seeking to limit next year’s budget deficit to 155.3 billion crowns instead of the record 230-billion deficit the country is now heading for. Prime Minister Fischer has made acceptance of a budget with the deficit capped at 170 billion crowns a condition of his staying on in office after the abandonment of autumn elections. The package is expected to be presented to the lower house of parliament on Thursday.
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