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05/14/2009
The volume of mortgages granted in the Czech Republic between January and April this year was one third down on the same period in 2008, according to figures released by the regional development ministry on Thursday. The fall has been attributed to caution on the side of lenders, and the fact potential home-owners are waiting to see if prices and interest rates fall further and are concerned about their ability to repay loans.
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05/14/2009
Czech Television has to pay a tax bill of CZK 300 million (USD 15 million) by the end of next week, the news website ihned.cz reported. The tax authorities say the public broadcaster failed to pay the required tax on license fees received from viewers. For its part, the station has taken the Prague 2 tax office to court, saying checks it carried out were unlawful.
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05/14/2009
The annual Bookworld Prague trade fair has got underway at the city’s Výstaviště centre. The theme of the 15th Bookworld is European literature, with writers from all 27 EU member states expected to appear between Thursday and the event’s close on Sunday. In 2008, 35,000 people attended the trade fair.
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05/14/2009
The Oscar winning Czech musician Markéta Irglová is planning to perform in the Czech Republic at the start of June as the special guest of the Irish singer Liam O’Maonlai. The two will play six dates in towns and cities around the country, including Irglová’s home-town of Valašské Meziříčí. She and another Irish musician, Glen Hansard, took the prize for best song at last year’s Academy Awards with Falling Slowly.
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05/14/2009
Czech footballer Tomáš Rosický resumed training with the Arsenal first team on Thursday. The midfielder has been out of the game for nearly a year and a half after suffering a tendon problem that required two operations. Rosický, who is 28, signed with the English club three years ago. He was also Czech captain before his long lay-off and has scored 19 goals in 68 appearances as an international.
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05/13/2009
Czech President Václav Klaus is receiving Declan Ganley, the head of the eurosceptic party Libertas, at Prague Castle on Wednesday. Mr Ganley last week welcomed the Czech president’s decision not to sign the Lisbon treaty into law, despite its ratification by both houses of Parliament. Libertas’s leader said President Klaus was standing by the people of Ireland and would not ratify the treaty without their consent. Mr Ganley led the initial referendum campaign in Ireland which ended up rejecting the Lisbon treaty and his party is now putting up candidates across Europe for European Parliament elections in June. President Klaus also opposes the Lisbon treaty as an attack on national sovereignty.
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05/13/2009
The Czech Chamber of Deputies passed a constitutional bill on Wednesday under which early elections will be held on October 9-10 at the latest. The bill also ordains that the current caretaker government will be dissolved by mid-October at the latest. The legislation, which was supported by 172 of the 189 deputies present, now goes to the Senate for final approval. As it is a constitutional law, it cannot be vetoed by Czech President Václav Klaus. The bill had the support of the two biggest parties in the lower house, the Civic Democrats and Social Democrats and, as these two parties also have a clear majority in the Senate, it is expected that the bill will be passed there too.
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05/13/2009
Meanwhile, interim leader Jan Fischer presented his cabinet to deputies in the Czech lower house on Wednesday. Mr Fischer’s caretaker cabinet was officially appointed by Czech President Václav Klaus last Friday. Addressing the lower house on Wednesday, Prime Minister Jan Fischer said his most pressing task was asking the lower house for a vote of confidence in his government. According to the Czech Constitution, an interim government has 30 days to so. On Tuesday, one of the parties which originally helped construct Mr Fischer’s caretaker government, the Social Democrats, said that they would not support the new cabinet in a confidence vote if it did not meet 21 of their demands.
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05/13/2009
Ministers from across the EU met with their counterparts from Latin America in Prague on Wednesday for an EU-Rio Group summit. Top of the agenda was the recent swine flu outbreak and the steps individual countries have taken to counter the spread of the virus. Mexico is currently the head of the Rio Group, though delegates from more than 40 countries attended the summit. According to Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout, steps that countries could take to help each other following the outbreak were discussed alongside security measures each country had chosen to implement. Swine flu has been confirmed in more than 30 countries though deaths from the virus have been registered in only four – Mexico, the United States, Canada and Costa Rica.
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05/13/2009
The priority of the Czech interim government must be repairing the damage done to the country’s EU presidency by recent domestic political turbulence, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout said in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Wednesday. Mr Kohout said that the success of the Czech EU presidency would also depend on the outcome of an EU summit in June, at which a new Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty would be discussed. The foreign minister said that the change of government in Prague had ‘certainly not contributed’ to the Czech Republic’s image in the European Union. In the interview with the German daily, however, Mr Kohout stressed that the European Union was not currently running on ‘autopilot’ and that the new Czech government was up to the task.
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