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The Christian Democrats have invited current president Vaclav Klaus to address all of the party’s deputies next week, and have asked Mr Klaus’s potential presidential rival, Jan Svejnar, to address the party’s senators. The Christian Democrats are still undecided which candidate they will back in next February’s presidential elections. Mr Klaus already has the support of the Civic Democrats, while Mr Svejnar has been pledged the support of the Social Democrats and the Greens. It seems increasingly likely that the Christian Democrats will have the key vote on the matter. On Tuesday, senior party member Michaela Sojdrova invited Mr Klaus to address MPs on December 4. This is something that Mr Svejnar has already done. According to Mrs Sojdrova, the Christian Democrats do not know yet which candidate they will back but, she added, the party had every intention of settling upon one chosen candidate in the coming weeks.

According to research commissioned by the European Union, Czechs are amongst the most dependent upon mobile phones in Europe. The research found that for every 100 Czechs, there were 115 mobile telephones. Only Luxemburg, Lithuania and Italy ranked above the Czech Republic in this respect. Furthermore, some 42% of Czech households were found to be without a conventional landline phone, relying solely upon mobile telephones to make calls. Only Finland and Lithuania had a lower percentage of landline telephones installed in households than here in the Czech Republic. But the research found that the Czech Republic was one of the least chatty nations in Europe. Czechs talk on their phones for an average of 1.7 minutes a day. The only countries to use their phones less than the Czech Republic were Germany, Poland and Luxemburg.

According to research conducted by the financial newspaper Hospodarske noviny, the most valuable Czech brand name is that of Skoda Auto. Second on the list is of brands is state-owned brewer Budejovicky Budvar. And it’s another brewer which comes third in the list, this time Plzensky Prazdroj. The list was compiled by 40 experts on advertising, marketing, finance and law. According to the research, several Czech trademarks are worth billions of crowns each. They include those of Skoda Auto and the two breweries mentioned before, as well as shoemaker’s Bata and the insurer Ceska Pojistovna. According to analyst Ales Michl, trademarks can account for anything between 20% to 50% of a firm’s value. Other brands which made an appearance in Hospodarske noviny’s list of top trademarks were Staropramen, Bohemia Glass and Kofola.

The incumbent Vaclav Klaus would defeat Jan Svejnar if there were a direct vote for president, suggests a poll carried out for the SC&C agency for the newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes. Sixty-three percent of respondents in the mid-November poll said they would vote for President Klaus if they could. On Wednesday his party the Civic Democrats are set to nominate Mr Klaus officially. Jan Svejnar, a US-based economist backed by the opposition Social Democrats and the Greens, is still seeking support for his possible candidature from other parties. Both houses of the Czech Parliament will vote on the next president at the beginning of February.