Press Review

All Czech dailies are unanimous in their choice of the main story today: the government's failure to push through a bill on rents in a vote which experts said would test the strength of the ruling coalition. Mlada Fronta Dnes says that the important bill was not refused by the lower house just because of two MPs that recently left the junior coalition Freedom Union. The reason was that several coalition MPs were on foreign trips and the opposition easily rejected the bill, Mlada Fronta Dnes explains.

Vladimir Spidla after voting about rents, photo: CTK

The deregulation of rents has been postponed, Pravo writes on its front page. According to the paper, the ones to blame for the failure of the bill, which was meant to gradually increase controlled rents, are those Social Democrat MPs who were on trips abroad. Pravo adds that the coalition parties did not succeed in their last minute effort to withdraw the bill from the chamber once they realised they had a minority in the lower house. The paper quotes the ever optimistic Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla as saying that this was no crisis in the coalition, only a minor hiccup.

The business daily Hospodarske Noviny pulls no punches when it says that the state will go on wasting money by subsidising housing for those who do not need it. The status quo remains, even though it is in contradiction with the Constitution, Hospodarske Noviny says. While in other countries the state provides financial assistance only to poor families which have difficulties covering their housing expenses, the Czech state subsidises the rich as well, at the same time making it difficult or even impossible for the less well-off to find affordable housing.

And no significant improvement is on the cards, the business daily says. The bill rejected on Tuesday would at least have partially bridged the gap between free market and regulated rents. The period of lawlessness is being prolonged, opening more room for corruption and cheating, Hospodarske Noviny writes.

Vaclav Klaus and Pavel Telicka, photo: CTK

Lidove Noviny reports that President Vaclav Klaus has expressed objections to the communist past of the man to become the first ever Czech EU Commissioner - Pavel Telicka. President Klaus had invited Mr Telicka to Prague Castle on Tuesday to "find out more about his views", as he put it. After the meeting Mr Klaus told journalists that Pavel Telicka's membership in pre-1989 Communist Party was indicative of his integrity.

"At a certain point he made a decision which I myself never made, and I believe it was possible to avoid such decisions,"Lidove Noviny quotes President Vaclav Klaus as commenting on future Czech EU commissioner Pavel Telicka's membership in the Czechoslovak Communist Party.

Pravo reports that the Dean of the Medical Faculty of Palacky University in Olomouc, Cestmir Cihalik, has resigned, after he was ordered to pay a fine by a New Zealand court which found him guilty of picking protected wild orchids and trying to smuggle them out of the country. Mr Cihalik was arrested and charged in January along with his friend Jindrich Smitak, an employee of the Czech Environmental Inspection Agency in Brno, and a number of orchids were found in their possession. The rector of Palacky University, Jana Macakova, accepted Mr Cihalik's resignation on Tuesday.