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02/05/2009
Senators for the ruling Civic Democratic Party are working on a new complaint to be lodged against the Lisbon treaty with the Czech Constitutional Court, the daily Lidové noviny reported on Thursday, citing one of the senators. Senator Petr Pakosta said he was working on the complaint with nine other colleagues but expected another 10 to 20 senators to support the initiative in due time. At least 17 members of the 81-seat Senate would have to sign such a complaint for it to be lodged. Last year the Civic Democrat dominated Senate had several articles of the treaty assessed by the Constitutional Court, which later ruled that they were not at variance with the Czech constitution.
Although it now presides over the EU, the Czech Republic is the only EU member state not to have voted on the EU reform treaty. On Wednesday the Civic Democrats and the Communists joined forces to postpone a ratification vote in the lower house yet again, at least until February 17th.
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02/05/2009
The lower house of Parliament has approved the Czech Republic’s foreign missions for 2009. Should the bill have been rejected, all Czech servicemen on missions abroad would have had to have been recalled. Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek’s cabinet tried and failed to have a draft of the army’s foreign missions approved in December, but with the opposition Social Democrats against plans to raise the number of troops in Afghanistan, the proposals were thrown out. After hours of heated debate on Wednesday, four Social Democrat MPs voted with the government to pass the bill. The Czech Republic will now have a total of 480 soldiers based in Afghanistan and 430 stationed in Kosovo.
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02/05/2009
David Rath, a deputy for the Social Democrats is demanding an apology from Reflex magazine for depicting him as Hitler on its cover page. Reflex did so in reaction to an interview for Lidove noviny in which Mr. Rath referred to the Nazi economic recovery plan. David Rath has since apologized for using an unfortunate example, but he maintains that his words were taken out of context and demonized. He said that many members of his family perished in Nazi concentration camps and that he had not in any way indicated sympathy for the Nazi regime.
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02/05/2009
The Czech Republic’s trade surplus in 2008 fell by 661 million euros from the 2007 level as full-year exports dropped by 0.7 percent and imports rose by 0.1 percent, the Czech Statistical Office said on Thursday. December exports fell at a double-digit pace and this decline is expected to deepen in the months to come. Analysts say the figures prove the extremely negative impact of the eurozone recession on the Czech economy.
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02/05/2009
The Czech Finance Ministry presented a tender on its website Thursday to sell a 91.5 percent state-held stake in the national air carrier Czech Airlines (ČSA). The public tender will consist of two rounds – a qualification round and a second round in which the only criterion will be the offered purchase price. In the first round bidders will have to guarantee that ČSA will retain the status of national air carrier with Prague airport as its home for five years. According to the Finance Ministry bidders from Western Europe, East Asia as well as Russia’s Aeroflot have expressed interest in the airline. The deadline for bids is March 23.
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02/04/2009
Czech Interior Minister Ivan Langer will visit Washington in March to discuss ways for the EU to help the United States close Guantanamo jail, it was announced on Wednesday. Mr Langer will represent the Czech EU presidency at the meeting, and will be accompanied by Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot. EU member states welcomed last week President Barack Obama’s decision to close the detention centre at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and are keen to help Washington do so. A minority of EU countries - France, Italy, Portugal and Spain – have said they may be ready to accept former prisoners.
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02/04/2009
On Wednesday evening, it was also announced that Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg would visit the United States next week. Mr Schwarzenberg is expected to meet American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. According to a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mr Schwarzenberg’s visit is yet to be fully planned and further details of the trip will be revealed on Friday.
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02/04/2009
The Chamber of Deputies voted on Wednesday to postpone a debate on whether to approve a US radar base on Czech soil. The opposition Social Democrats and coalition members the Greens voted together to have the base scratched from the agenda of this month’s parliamentary session. The Greens said that they did not want to discuss the proposed radar base when it was no longer certain that the project had the White House’s support. An article published by British paper the Times on Wednesday suggested that the new American President Barack Obama may sacrifice plans for an anti-missile defence system in Central Europe if Russia agrees to enter into talks about downscaling its nuclear arsenal. Czech prime minister Mirek Topolánek, who wanted parliament to discuss the radar on Wednesday, said that the Times’ report was just speculation, and that what was important was what Mr Obama had to say.
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02/04/2009
The Chamber of Deputies has postponed a vote on ratifying the European Union’s Lisbon treaty until February 17 at the earliest. The ruling centre-right Civic Democrats, backed by the Communists, pushed through the postponement with 115 votes in the 200-seat lower house. The Czech Republic, which currently heads the EU, is the last country in the bloc to vote on the Lisbon treaty. In December, MPs voted to put off any decision until 2009. The Czech ratification process was initially delayed when right-wing senators challenged the Lisbon treaty’s constitutionality at the Czech Constitutional Court in Brno in June.
Even if the Czech Parliament does ratify the EU reform document, the country’s eurosceptic president Václav Klaus has said that he will not sign it unless Ireland does. Irish voters rejected the Lisbon treaty in a referendum last June and are expected to vote on it again this year.
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02/04/2009
The Chamber of Deputies started debating the Czech Republic’s foreign missions for 2009 on Wednesday. In December, deputies threw out an earlier draft of the bill, which was subsequently reworked. If this draft is not approved then Czech forces could find themselves in an unprecedented situation, all having to return home. The main point of contention in the bill is a plan to raise the number of Czech servicemen in Afghanistan. The opposition Social Democrats were, in the past, opposed to this idea.
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