Ministry withdraws plan for huge campaign to support domestic holidays

The Ministry for Regional Development has withdrawn a plan to spend CZK 2 billion on a campaign aimed at persuading Czechs to vacation domestically, the Czech News Agency said. The idea was slammed by the opposition, who said such a huge advertising drive would in fact be a form of support for media outlets, some of which were bought by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. The ministry has now recalled the project from a government comments procedure and says it will work on it further.

The original plan was for advertising spending of CZK 700 million on TV stations, CZK 400 million on print media outlets and the same amount on websites.