Representatives of eight parties running for the Chamber of Deputies met on Sunday evening in a pre-election debate on CNN Prima News, however, the leader of the coalition of Pirates and the Mayors and Independents (STAN) movement, Ivan Bartoš, was missing and replaced by the head of STAN, Vít Rakušan. The heated debate saw the candidates clash over the country’s pandemic response and the state of emergency, while the topic of remaining in the European Union was also addressed. Where is the Pirates‘ leader? In the debate, the head of the ANO movement and Prime Minister Andrej Babiš asked the chairman of STAN Vít Rakušan the location of the leader of the coalition of Pirates and STAN, Ivan Bartoš. “Why isn’t Bartoš here? You are two candidates for prime minister from one coalition, I guess,“ said the prime minister. The debate on CNN Prima News was called “Czechia is Looking for a Prime Minister”. Bartoš is the coalition’s official candidate for the prime minister. “We are a coalition of two leaders. We don’t have an owner and Mr. Bartoš faced you in the debate on Friday,“ Rakušan responded. In addition, a Sunday survey by Kantar showed that the Pirates had fallen...
The gas transmission system operators of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Germany plan to build a hydrogen corridor from Ukraine across Central Europe. The companies did not disclose the likely price of the energy project. A joint initiative called the Central European Hydrogen Corridor focuses on the development of a hydrogen “highway” in Central Europe. It should be used to transport the hydrogen from future major production areas in Ukraine, which, according to companies, offers excellent conditions for its massive organic production. The idea is a joint initiative of the Slovak company Eustream, the Czech company Net4Gas, the German company OGE, and the operator of the Ukrainian gas transmission system (Gas TSO of Ukraine). The corridor is to run through Slovakia and Czechia to areas of expected strong demand in Germany and the EU. According to the companies, it will also enable the transport of hydrogen between hydrogen production facilities and its consumers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Hydrogen network is essential for the European market The initiators of the project believe that the Central European Hydrogen Corridor can be created by partial reuse of the existing gas infrastructure in combination with targeted investments in new specialized hydrogen...
The Czech Republic currently lacks approximately 14,000 IT professionals. Altogether, the sector now employs over 316,000 people and about 79 percent of companies have difficulty finding suitable candidates when looking for new specialists. This follows from the Coding Bootcamp Prague and Techloop survey. The number of responses to IT advertisements is often many times lower than in other fields, and the representation of women in this sector is still minimal. This is despite the fact a senior developer can earn up to 200,000 crowns a month. “There are several reasons why supply is many times higher than demand,” said Techloop co-founder Andrew Elliott. “Above all, it is the low number of university graduates or the growing demand due to digitalisation. “Another reason why the demand in this sector is so low may be the relatively demanding retraining for IT positions, ” he added. The average salary offered for employment is 68,000, which is more than the CZSO average. Junior positions are usually around 40,000, while seniors are CZK 80,000 gross. According to data provided by Techloop, a freelancer can earn up to 40,000 more per month than if he were employed. This is one of the main reasons why...
If your day doesn’t start until you’re up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to our new morning fix. CZECH REPUBLIC The Parliament Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) elected Czech Katerina Simackova a new judge of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday. Simackova, who is now a Czech Constitutional Court judge, will replace Ales Pejchal, whose ECHR mandate expires in late October. Her nine-year mandate starts on November 1. On Monday, the government approved the long-discussed increase in pension rates proposed by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. The average pension in the Czech Republic will increase by CZK 800 to over CZK 16,000 in 2022. There are still more than 416,000 seniors over 60 who are not protected from COVID-19 either by vaccination or by having undergone the infection in the Czech Republic, according to the data of the Health Information and Statistics Institute (UZIS) dated Sept. 25 and released to CTK on Tuesday. WORLD Italy’s health ministry said on Tuesday it had given the go-ahead for travel to six non-European tourist spots without the need for quarantine as a COVID-19 precaution either on arrival or return. Italians...
Exactly 80 years ago, on 28 September 1941, Reinhard Heydrich came to Prague on Hitler’s orders to take up the position of Reichsprotektor. He was 37 years old. At a gathering of Nazi officials several days before his arrival in Prague, he clearly expressed how he wanted to handle the population of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. A “final solution” awaited Jews, Roma and others in the death camps, while the Slavs were to be either murdered or Germanized and moved as far east as possible. “The Bohemian-Moravian area must never be left in such a state that the Czechs might be able to claim it as theirs… This space must be German once and for all so the Czech will have no claim to it in the end,” Heydrich said in that speech. Reinhard Heydrich was one of the direct co-authors of the Holocaust – both of the idea of murdering homosexuals, Jewish people, mentally or physically disabled people, Romani people and others, as well as of the methods for pursuing genocide – death camps, Germanization, and racial/ethnic pogroms. The tragic fate of the Czech and Moravian Jews and Roma began under his rule. Heydrich left a bloody...
Recently, there have been more and more complaints from the post-worker unions. Now, the situation has reached a boiling point, as the workers have a 3-day strike planned from September 29th to October 1st. Employees intend to “accurately” comply with all job descriptions and labor protection standards, which will significantly reduce productivity. This is the so-called ‘go slow’ or ‘work to the rule’ strike: a situation where employees slow down all procedures while doing their job to force negotiation on job-related issues. It is particularly used by public employees to slow down their government agency function and create public pressure to negotiate change or address issues. About 9000 people will take part in it, almost a third of the total number of employees. Postal workers require improved working conditions, in particular, less workload, overwork, and the constant decline in the quality of services provided by the company. Since the company is state-owned, the government has direct control over how it operates, and its current bad name is a stain on the reputation of the Czech Republic. Czech Post employs a total of around 27,000 people. Since 2018, the company has been unprofitable and is taking steps to restructure, which has already...
St. Václav is the patron of the Czech lands and the most popular saint here. Since the year 2000, September 28 has been a state holiday: the day of Czech Statehood.
If your day doesn’t start until you’re up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to our new morning fix. CZECH REPUBLIC Renáta Kellnerová, widow of the late Petr Kellner owner of the financial group PPF, now tops the ladder as the richest Czech, in a survey compiled by the weekly Euro. Her assets are estimated at 250 billion crowns. The Czech cabinet approved the 2022 budget bill with a CZK 376.6 billion deficit on Monday. The junior ruling Social Democrat party did not vote for the bill, saying the proposed wage increase for civil servants was too low, Finance Minister Alena Schillerova (for ANO) has tweeted. The gas transmission system operators of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Germany plan to build a hydrogen corridor from Ukraine across Central Europe. The companies did not disclose the likely price of the energy project. WORLD French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Monday that if she is elected president in the 2022 election, she will call a referendum proposing drastic limits on immigration. The referendum would propose strict criteria for entering French territory and for acquiring French nationality, as well as giving French citizens priority access...
Czech literature has a rich tradition of questioning introspection that reaches back more than a century, to Franz Kafka’s existentialism, Karel Čapek’s sci-fi, and Jaroslav Hašek’s satire. Once the Soviets quashed the Prague Spring in 1968, however, Czechoslovakia’s authors were unable to freely publish fiction that could be perceived as critical of the regime. Many of them left for the West, but their writing remained focused on the land they left behind. After the Velvet Revolution, a flurry of novels finally saw widespread release, and three decades of capitalism have only shifted, rather than eliminated, the targets of critique. Here are seven novels by Czech authors published since 1989 that incisively, creatively, and memorably parse Czech society. Too Loud a Solitude (1989) Written by Bohumil Hrabal and translated by Michael Henry Heim “Not until we’re totally crushed do we show what we are made of.” For 35 years, Hrabal’s defiant narrator Haňtá has worked underground, recycling waste paper with his hydraulic press. He is not content, however, to simply crush bales for the paper mill, and instead crafts what he sees as works of art, homages to the written word. Haňtá also rescues books from the heaps he recycles, delivering...
The Czech defense ministry will buy a short- and medium-range air defense system made by Israeli state-owned supplier Rafael, the Defence Ministry said on Monday. The ministry said it had informed the cabinet it would conclude a government-to-government deal to buy Rafael’s SPYDER Short Range Air Defence/Medium Range Surface to Air Missile (SHORAD/MRSAM), with four batteries, each equipped with its own 3D radar, fire command and control system, and four launchers. It said it would pay CZK 13.69 billion for the system, which will replace Soviet-made technology from the 1970s. The government has been raising defense spending to modernize its armed forces but has admitted it would fall short of its pledge as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to spend 2% of the gross domestic product on defense by 2024. The ministry said last year when it opened talks on the Rafael deal that it planned to buy four batteries, each including its own radar, command and control unit. The system, used to protect cities, nuclear power plants and other potential targets, will be supplied by 2026, it said.
This year, the nightmare for music festival organizers returned in the form of more lockdowns and the cancellation of even more events as new variants spread. After two years of hardship, organizers of the events are now trying to devote their energy and money to prepare for the new, hopefully, regular season of 2022. Preparation comes as it was recently revealed the losses of some larger festivals went up to millions of crowns. One of the biggest music festivals, Colors of Ostrava, had to cancel this year. Jiří Sedlák, the spokesman for the show held in Dolní Vítkovice in Ostrava, explained how organizations had no other option but to put a stop to the festival for yet another year due to the new Covid variants. “Last year, the organizers of Colors calculated a loss of more than 12 million crowns,” he said, speaking of the devastating effect. He has since tried to make money by organizing smaller and permitted events, either live or online. “We were able to survive only thanks to supporting from many sources – the fans kept last year’s tickets for this year, and thus helped us with sustainable cash flow. Further help came from our partners...
Prague is preparing to celebrate the 90th anniversary of its very own zoo which first opened its gates on September 28, 1931. Since opening all of them years back, it has grown into an exceptionally acclaimed institution. Tomorrow, on Tuesday, September 28, celebrations will commence, and the zoo will return to the style of the 1930s and show visitors just how much it has changed throughout the nine decades of its existence. The Prague Zoo will commemorate its anniversary with a book launch, and a rich accompanying program. There will also be historical motorcycles, a flute player in period costume, swing dance workshops, a hairdressing salon, a themed photo corner and another accompanying program. Many important guests will also arrive to congratulate the Prague Zoo on such a significant anniversary. Miroslav Bobek, director of Prague Zoo, expressed his appreciation to all who have helped keep the zoo running over the years. “The zoo is an extremely complex organism and would not work only without breeders, curators or veterinarians, but also without maintenance workers and cashiers, cooks and cleaners and other professions. “And so now, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the opening of the Prague Zoo, I would...
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