News

The American ambassador to the Czech Republic, Richard Graber, spoke out against corruption and lack of transparency within the Czech political system at a conference held at the Czech Senate on Wednesday. According to Mr. Graber, reports from Transparency International and other such organizations indicated that corruption was still present in both Czech business and political spheres. The ambassador put this down to the fact that democracy in the Czech Republic was, he said, still very young. And he did see the situation as improving. Among other measures being taken, Mr. Graber commended the Czech government's new anti-corruption telephone line, which Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek launched on Tuesday.

Czech police are investigating some of the firms involved in the building of the Czech nuclear power station Temelin in the early 1990s, the Aktualne.cz news website wrote on Thursday. Police suspect that the state could have paid as much as 100 million CZK (5 million USD) for work firms claimed to have done, and that was in fact fictitious. The anti-corruption police unit has confirmed that it is in the process of investigating, but has refused to reveal any details.

The alarm was raised by German detectives investigating a Westphalian firm on charges of money laundering. Their investigations led them to find millions of crowns deposited in this firm's accounts by Czech companies that had been involved in the construction of Temelin.

The Czech Senate has approved a first draft of an amendment which would ban the use and display of both Nazi and Communist symbols. Over the next couple of months, the matter will be discussed further by the Senate, and then, if approved, by the lower house. Senators from the leading Civic Democratic Party are split over the amendment. Critics call the proposal undemocratic and unconstitutional. The proposal is to outlaw the logos of extremist groups, such as the swastika and the hammer and sickle. But the Czech Communist Party, whose logo may also be affected by the amendment, has said in response that it is a democratic party, and not an extremist group. A similar amendment was proposed under the last government, but it was not approved in the lower house.

According to Hospodarske Noviny, the Czech government has lowered the target it set for over 500 civil servants to learn French fluently by 2009. The Czech Republic takes over the EU presidency from France at the beginning of 2009, and hundreds of civil servants had been sent to Prague's French Institute to gain a command of the language as part of the preparations. But now, the government has lowered its expectations, asking only for a basic knowledge of French from its employees. Time constraints have been blamed for move. The Czech Minister for European Affairs, Alexandr Vondra has been quoted as saying that he himself does not speak French, and finds it unlikely that he would learn it well enough to help him within a one-year time frame.