News

Roughly one percent of companies in Czechia have introduced a four-day work week, the news site Novinky reported. According to the news site around one thousand companies are testing the impact of the change. Employees have to complete the work in four days instead of five, while maintaining the standard eight-hour workday for the same wage. Some say the change has had positive results including a better atmosphere in the workplace and a higher number of applicants for new positions.

However some companies which introduced the four-day work week have already abandoned it, Novinky says. Critics argue that given Europe’s competitiveness such a model is untenable in the long-term.

Croatian police have said they are investigating a 46-year-old Czech citizen in connection with Wednesday's explosion near the town of Obrovac that killed a nine-year-old boy and injured three people. Criminal investigators say the man allowed the child to carry an explosive device found at a marked military training ground into their car. The child subsequently caused it to explode during an unscheduled stop when the family car broke down. Two women, and the man being held accountable were hospitalised in Zadar following the blast.

The City of Prague is set to buy a major city centre property. On Thursday evening councillors definitively approved the purchase of a building on the corner of Wenceslas Square and Štěpánská St. from the bank Komerční banka at a cost of CZK 3.5 billion.

The municipality plans to move officials to the new building from the Škoda Palace in Jungmannova Street, which it has leased until the end of March 2028.

The perpetrator of a mass shooting at a university in Prague in December had feelings of injustice, resentment and hatred and felt ostracised, unaccepted and useless, a state prosecutor, Jana Murínová, told the Czech lower house’s Security Committee on Thursday. In an address to MPs, she reiterated that according to expert assessments the student did not suffer from any serious psychological disorder.

Also speaking to the Security Committee on Thursday, the head of the Czech police, Martin Vondrášek, said two weak points in the force’s handling of the incident had been communication with the university administration and the police’s own analytical skills. He said there were several areas in which the police needed to improve.

Fourteen people were left dead and dozens injured after the young man carried out a mass shooting at the main building of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague on December 21. He took his own life during the biggest mass shooting in modern Czech history. He had earlier killed a father and his baby in woodlands in an evident random shooting.