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The Czech Foreign Ministry has confirmed it is aware of the German government’s interest in buying the country’s embassy building in Prague, a site that played a major role in the events leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago. A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said his country had long hoped to purchase Prague’s historic Lobkowitz Palace, home of the embassy, and that talks with the Czech government had advanced ahead of the anniversary of the Wall's collapse on November 9, 1989. That year, thousands of East Germans hoping to flee to the West massed for weeks at the German embassy in Prague before they were allowed to enter West Germany.

The number of visitors staying in hotels in the Czech Republic in the first half of the year dropped by 8.5 percent compared to the same period last year. According to the Czech Statistical Office, 5.37 million visitors used hotel accommodation in the first six months of 2009 – the lowest figure in recent years. The head of the Czech Association of Travel Agencies, Viliam Sivek, says this year’s tourist season has been the worst in twenty years. He expects dozens of Prague hotels to close down in the coming months.

The Prague state attorney's office has said it has halted the prosecution of Marcela Urbanová accused of giving a false testimony in the case of former deputy prime minister Jiří Čunek who was charged with bribery. A spokeswoman for the State Attorney’s office said Ms Urbanová, Jiří Čunek’s former secretary, had not spoken the truth, but had not intended to lie under oath. If found guilty, Ms Urbanová would have faced up to three years in prison. She was accused in June 2008. According to the police she lied about the circumstances in which Mr Čunek allegedly accepted a bribe of half a million crowns in 2002 when he was mayor of the eastern town of Vsetín.

The Czech Finance Minister has said he wants to raise the rate of VAT in the Czech Republic in a bid to lessen next year’s budget deficit. Speaking on Czech Television on Sunday, Eduard Janota said that he would be proposing to Parliament a raise in the lower rate of VAT from nine to 11 percent, while the higher VAT rate should go up from 19 to 20 percent, he added. Should his proposals be accepted, Mr Janota said that the budget deficit in 2010 would amount to around 160 billion crowns (8.83 billion USD). If no such changes were made, Mr Janota said that next year’s budget deficit would be closer to 230 billion crowns (12.7 billion USD). In the same interview with Czech Television’s Václav Moravec, Mr Janota said that it was ‘unrealistic’ to think about euro adoption before 2014 or 2015 in the current financial climate.