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06/10/2009
Some 689 Czechs were either in prison or custody abroad in December 2008, the Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday. Seventy-five of those detained were being held on suspicion of drug-related crimes, the ministry said. In 2007, the ministry registered over 1,000 Czechs in foreign prisons. The country with the highest number of Czechs in jail is neighbouring Austria, where 156 Czechs are currently behind bars, followed by Spain where there are at the moment 91 Czech prisoners. Some 75 Czechs are currently in an American jail, the ministry said. According to a spokesperson, the number of Czechs in jail abroad could in fact be many times higher, as these were only the cases that the Czech Republic’s consulates around the world were aware of.
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06/10/2009
The Czech lower house voted on whether to ban smoking in restaurants on Wednesday, and decided that it should be left up to restaurants themselves to decide whether smoking was, or was not permitted on their premises. This was the least strict of the three proposals put forward. If approved by the Senate and signed into law by Czech President Václav Klaus, the new legislation will come into effect in July 2010. Smoking is banned in public buildings, trains, in stations and at bus stops in the Czech Republic though there is no smoking ban in the country’s bars and restaurants.
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06/10/2009
The Social Democrats would win a general election if it were held right now, suggests a poll conducted by the Median agency and released on Wednesday. Almost 36 percent of respondents said that they would vote for Jiří Paroubek’s Social Democrats, while the Civic Democrats would garner 28 percent of the vote. The Social Democrats finished second in this weekend’s elections to the European Parliament behind former Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek’s Civic Democrats. The poll found that the Communist Party and the Christian Democrats would also cross the five-percent threshold necessary to gain parliamentary representation.
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06/09/2009
Five MPs have quit the Christian Democrats, the fourth biggest grouping in the Czech lower house. Mirolsav Kalousek, Jan Husák, Ladislav Šustr, Vlasta Parkanová and Pavel Severa all said they were leaving the party on Tuesday. There are now eight MPs left in the deputies group of the Christian Democrats, which is headed by the party’s new leader Cyril Svoboda.
Mr Kalousek, who was finance minister in the last government, is planning to form a new centre-right party named TOP 09 to contest general elections in October. Meanwhile, the Czech News Agency reported that a number of Christian Democrat senators were also considering leaving the party.
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06/09/2009
Martin Bursík has resigned as leader of the Greens in the wake of a poor showing for the party in elections to the European Parliament at the weekend. The Green Party received just two percent of the vote, falling well short of the five-percent threshold needed to win any seats. Speaking after a five-hour meeting of the Greens’ leadership, Mr Bursík said he was taking personal responsibility for the party’s electoral failure. Deputy head Ondřej Liška has been named acting chairman and will lead the Greens into early elections in October.
The Green Party was for some time beset by internal divisions which culminated with some high-profile members leaving to form another Green group, who also did badly in the European elections.
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06/09/2009
The Czech economy is officially in recession, after GDP fell for the second consecutive quarter in the first three months of 2009. The economy shrank by 3.4 percent year-on-year in the quarter, the Czech Statistical Office said on Tuesday, after a revision confirmed its estimate from May. The poor figures have been blamed on a decline in the manufacturing sector; the Czech Republic is heavily dependent on the car industry. The Czech National Bank forecasts a 2.4 percent contraction for the whole of this year.
Meanwhile, consumer inflation hit a 28-month low in May: the 1.3 percent year-on-year inflation recorded last month was the lowest seen since January 2007, according to official data.
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06/09/2009
The caretaker Czech prime minister, Jan Fischer, has given his endorsement to Jose Manuel Barroso’s bid to win a second term as president of the European Commission. The two met in Brussels on Tuesday ahead of a European Union summit in the city on June 18 and 19 that will be chaired by the Czech leader and make the appointment. Jan Fischer took over as Czech prime minister following the collapse of the Czech government half-way through the country’s presidency of the EU.
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06/09/2009
A Prague court has rejected a suit from Social Democrats chairman Jiří Paroubek aimed at winning an apology and financial compensation from Jan Kubice, a former head of the Czech police’s organised crime unit. Mr Paroubek said the so-called Kubice report, which was leaked to the media just before the last general elections, had harmed his party’s chances. The report suggested Mr Paroubek, who was then prime minister, the Interior Ministry and the head of the police were trying to influence investigations into serious crimes, including murder and large-scale embezzlement.
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06/09/2009
Twenty-seven Czech soldiers who had been serving at an airport in Kabul since December returned to the Czech Republic on Tuesday. The troops who have replaced them can look forward to tough times as elections will take place in Afghanistan during their tour, their commander Lieutenant Colonel Jiří Pluhař told reporters. The elections will lead to increased risks and a worsening of the overall security situation, he said. Some 480 Czech soldiers are currently serving with the ISAF peace mission in Afghanistan, while 100 more are taking part in anti-terrorism operations as part of the US-led operation Enduring Freedom.
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06/09/2009
Police have arrested several far-right extremists and carried out searches of their homes and cars. A spokesperson for the Brno regional authority told the website novinky.cz that the police had been acting under orders from a state attorney’s office in the Brno district. A lawyer who represents far-right activists quoted one of her clients as saying the arrests had been made in connection with internet web sites, articles and rock concerts.
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