The leaders of nine NATO nations from Central and Eastern Europe issued a joint statement on Sunday in support of Ukraine’s path to membership in the alliance. “We firmly stand behind the 2008 Bucharest NATO Summit decision concerning Ukraine’s future membership,” the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Czechia, Romania, North Macedonia, and Slovakia said on Sunday. At that 2008 summit, NATO allies said they “welcomed” Ukraine and Georgia’s aspirations to the join the alliance, though no clear timetable has ever been announced. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted on Sunday that 10 NATO countries support Ukraine’s bid for membership, including some nations that used to belong to the Soviet Union. “We are grateful for the leadership and responsibility,” Podolyak tweeted. “History is being made today.” Within 48 hours of @ZelenskyyUa signing application to join NATO, 10 bloc countries supported Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance – mostly countries that remember poisonous claws of ru-empire. We are grateful for the leadership and responsibility. History is being made today. — Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) October 2, 2022 Zelenskyy said on Friday that Kyiv has “accelerated” its application for NATO membership after Russia annexed four Ukrainian territories. “De facto, we have already proven...
Government coalition leaders the Civic Democrats have emerged as the biggest winners of elections to one-third of the seats in the Czech Senate, taking eight of the 27 mandates contested. Second-round, two-candidate runoffs were held in 24 constituencies on Friday and Saturday after three candidates won seats by gaining more than 50 percent in last weekend’s first round. Overall, the ruling coalition parties won 18 seats in the ballot. Recent large demonstrations against the Czech government due to its handling of the energy crisis and its support for Ukraine didn’t translate into gains for the opposition. Former populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis called the ballot a referendum about the government but his centrist ANO movement won only three seats. The major anti-migrant party, Freedom and Direct Democracy remained without a single seat in the upper house. Parliament´s lower house dominates the legislative process, but the Senate plays an important role in passing constitutional amendments and approving Constitutional Court judges. The current Czech government firmly stands behind Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia. The country has donated arms, including heavy weapons, to the Ukrainian armed forces and welcomed some 430,000 refugees from Ukraine.
The Czech EU Presidency will reopen the discussion on visa liberalisation for Kosovo this autumn according to Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský (Pirates, Greens/EFA) and Kosovo’s foreign ministry. The topic should be discussed this autumn as soon as the European Commission finalises the updated version of its report on Kosovo’s preparedness. Kosovo remains the only country in the Western Balkans and Europe that does not enjoy visa liberalisation despite having met the conditions several years ago. Pushback reportedly comes from France, but also a handful of countries that do not accept its independence from Serbia including Greece, Romania, Spain, Cyprus and Slovakia, mainly due to their own territorial disputes. “Kosovo, which I will visit this week, is the last Western Balkan country whose citizens still need visas for travelling to the EU. Yet the goal of the Czech Republic and the EU is to integrate the Western Balkan countries into the EU. Our presidency is an opportunity to push the entire integration process forward,” Lipavský said, quoted by the Czech News Agency. It is expected the topic will be on the table in the autumn as soon as the European Commission finalises the updated version of its report on Kosovo’s...
Fifty percent of people have already reduced their spending. Moreover, nine out of ten Czechs expect to tighten their belts even more due to inflation. More than half of people are actively looking for discounts as their main cost-saving tool and are also cutting back on excessive current spending. That’s according to a Median survey of 1,022 respondents for Broker Consulting. A job or second job is being sought by 23 percent of respondents. The general price increase is felt by 94 percent of Czechs, more than a third of them very strongly, the authors of the survey said. Therefore, a third of people are also trying to significantly or partially reduce the cost of eating out in restaurants, while a quarter is cutting back on culture or travel. Every fourth respondent is already planning to cover increased energy costs during the heating season in this manner, and another 35% are still considering it. Three-quarters of respondents are concerned about the impact of inflation on domestic budgets. They use savings and current accounts most often for saving, and in one-third of cases, they put their savings into investment or mutual funds. Nearly three-quarters of Czechs with a reserve of more...
Former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s opposition ANO party won most of the country’s major cities in municipal elections seen as a test for the ruling coalition’s handling of the energy crisis. The Czech Republic, similar to other European Union member countries, has been struggling with soaring inflation pushed up mainly by high energy prices. The opposition has been saying that the government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala has done too little too late to help the people. Czechs voted in more than 6,000 municipalities on Friday and Saturday, with the final results declared on Sunday morning due to a complicated system of vote distribution. The ANO party, in opposition since last autumn, won in 17 out of 27 large cities, but it came second in the two largest ones – the capital Prague and Brno, where parties of the current ruling coalition won. Of the 13 regional towns, ANO has won in eight, the ruling parties in five. The ANO party won in Hradec Králové, Jihlava, Karlovy Vary, Olomouc, Ostrava, Pardubice, Ústí nad Labem and Zlín. The most seats in the local assemblies – 38,099 out of the total 61,796 – go to various groups of independent candidates, which...
In response to the energy crisis, the Ministry of Health is proposing to reduce the minimum permissible temperatures in the working environment. As iRozhlas reports, for drivers, workers on assembly lines, or cashiers, the temperature should drop from the current 18 to 16 degrees Celsius. It should drop from 20 to 18 degrees in changing rooms, from 22 to 19 degrees in washrooms, from 25 to 19 degrees in showers and from 18 to 15 degrees in toilets. The draft amendment to the Occupational Health Regulation will be discussed by the government on Monday. “The main reason is to revise the legal framework in relation to minimum temperature requirements in the workplace in view of the current situation. Natural gas supplies are being reduced and interrupted, when a further increase and persistence of the energy crisis is expected,” the ministry said in a memorandum. The current set temperatures date back to 2007. “It is a temperature that no one is allowed to low,” added Válek. According to him, the ministry consulted sanitation workers and compared the proposal with other countries. According to Válek, the recommended temperatures have not changed for a long time, so they do not reflect global warming.”...
The war in Ukraine threw a wrinkle into the National Hockey League’s planned return to Europe next month to play its first games outside North America since the start of the pandemic. The Czech Foreign Ministry told two NHL teams opening their seasons in Prague that any Russian players would not be welcome because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It may not amount to an outright ban and league officials downplayed the potential impact, but it added a layer of uncertainty to a Global Series the NHL is proud of. The Nashville Predators and San Jose Sharks are set to play regular-season games Oct. 7 and 8 at Prague´s O2 Arena as part of the series that is intended to put the world’s top players on display, primarily in Europe. There are not many Russians on the two rosters: Nashville has forward Yakov Trenin and San Jose has Alexander Barabanov, along with Evgeny Svechnikov, who is in training camp on a tryout agreement. “We can confirm that the Czech Foreign Ministry has sent a letter to the NHL to point out that, at this moment, the Czech Republic or any other state in the (visa-free) Schengen zone should not issue...
The Czech Republic will never agree to recognize the results of referendums held at liberated territories of Ukraine, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský wrote on Twitter. “The referendums were an obvious attempt to annex more Ukrainian territory as happened in the case of Crimea. They constituted a flagrant violation of international law for which Moscow must be held accountable,” added Lipavský. Kyiv’s Western allies were swift to condemn the announced referendums. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called them “sham” votes, while French President Emmanuel Macron described them as a “travesty”. The United States said they were “an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that Washington would never recognize Russian claims to annexed Ukrainian territory. The planned annexation referendums have been prepared for months and come as Ukrainian forces have made notable gains in the northeastern Kharkiv region and in the east. The votes follow the model of the 2014 referendum by which Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula in southern Ukraine, which Kyiv and the West refused to recognize. Putin calls up reservists President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial military mobilization and vowed on Wednesday to use “all available means” to protect Russian territory, after Moscow-held regions of...
The EU Council approved the plan to provide Ukraine with additional 5 billion euro in the form of macro-financial assistance (MFA). EU finance minister approved the move at the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) Council meeting earlier this month in Prague, the Council reminded in a statement on Tuesday. The body pointed out that the latest MFA package “complements other EU support to Ukraine in the humanitarian, development customs and defence fields.” Zbyněk Stanjura, Czech Minister of Finance, noted that the EU supports Ukraine. “We deliver on our promises and help ensure that the Ukrainian state and its key infrastructure can continue to function despite Russia’s war of aggression,” he added and announced “at the next ECOFIN meetings, I will push for a swift agreement on the provision of the remaining 3 billion euro.” The Council stressed that the latest MFA aid will be provided “in the form of highly concessional long-term loans…. it constitutes the second stage in the implementation of the planned full Union’s exceptional macro-financial assistance to Ukraine for up to 9 billion euro, announced by the European Commission in its communication of 18 May.” Risk absorption included The body pointed out that its latest decision provides the...
A new opinion poll suggests that the populist ANO party of former prime minister Andrej Babiš is most popular among voters just a week ahead of municipal and senate elections. Conducted by the STEM agency for CNN Prime News, the poll which was published on Sunday found that Babiš’ enjoys 30% of voter confidence, followed by the anti-EU Freedom and Democracy Party (ID) with 14.3%. “The Freedom and Democracy Party is gaining ground at a time of heated moods and uncertain prospects thanks to its long-standing anti-establishment basis,” the STEM agency commented. Both parties are very critical of the EU, particularly amid the current energy crisis. They favour nationalistic and populistic solutions while promising lower living costs to their potential voters. The ruling party of Civic Democrats (ECR) got only 14.2%. Their coalition partners, Pirates (Greens/EFA), reached 9.4%, but other parties of the five-party coalition government would barely reach the 5% threshold to enter the Czech Parliament. On the other hand, the ANO movement is preferred among Czech voters over 60 and those with a lower education rate. ANO is also very popular in small towns, while the governing parties are more successful in big cities and among people with...
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala called on Czechs to handle gas and electricity in a rational manner to save their own money and help lower state expenditures, while also helping the Czech economy. He added that the state would set a positive example by economising on the use of energy. The Czech government’s recently decided to cap the prices of energy for households, small and medium-sized enterprises and public institutions. “Over CZK 100 billion is involved, which we have to get from somewhere. We don’t want to borrow money once again, as previous cabinets did repeatedly,” Fiala said. The government is also discussing options to compensate large high-net-worth Czech companies and industrial enterprises for lost profits due to rising energy costs. Besides using the planned windfall tax, targeting extraordinary profits among energy companies, the state should finance the electricity and gas price caps from increased dividends from state-controlled companies, including the CEZ energy provider, Fiala said. The soaring price of energy in late August is a direct consequence of Russia’s economic war against the West, said Fiala. “Its goal is to threaten the social certainties of people in European countries, paralyse our economies, undermine citizens’ trust in the state and democracy itself, and...
The foreign minister of the Czech Republic, current holder of the presidency of the Council of the EU, called for a “special international tribunal” after evidence of torture on civilians emerged from a mass burial site in Izyum in northeastern Ukraine. “Russia left behind mass graves of hundreds of shot and tortured people in the Izyum area. In the 21st century, such attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent,” Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský wrote in a Twitter thread on Saturday. “We stand for the punishment of all war criminals. I call for the speedy establishment of a special international tribunal that will prosecute the crime of aggression,” he said. Izyum was one of Moscow’s main strongholds in the area until September 10, when a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive aimed at recapturing the Kharkiv region drove Russian troops out of the city. Following the discovery of a mass grave in a nearby wood containing the remains of over 440 people — mostly thought to be civilians — Ukrainian forces started exhuming the bodies on Friday. According to Ukrainian officials, some of the bodies recovered so far show signs of torture. The chief of the prosecutor’s office for the Kharkiv region told the Reuters...
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