Political leaders in the Czech Republic have previously condemned Islam in strong terms. Now, Jiří Kobza and his party Freedom and Direct Democracy, which is one of the larger in parliament, believe Islam is not just a religion but also a violent ideology that should be banned. “We have suggested that all ideologies that promote hatred and violence should be banned. One of the ideologies is Islam. And then we have fascism and Nazism”, he says. He points out that Muslims neither want nor will integrate into non-Muslim societies. “It is not migration – it’s colonization”, he added A strong mistrust of Islam exists throughout the political spectrum in the Czech Republic, where only 0.5 percent of the population are Muslim. “We do not want more Muslims in the Czech Republic”, the Social Democratic then Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka noted in an interview last year. Even Czech President Milos Zeman, who is also a Social Democrat, has strongly condemned the Middle Eastern religion. Among other things, he has said that Islam simply does not belong in Europe. Author: red
The Czech unemployment rate was unchanged at around a two-decade low of 2.8 percent of the workforce in November, the Labour Ministry said on Monday. The figure, the lowest number for that month since 1995, was in line with analysts’ forecasts for 2.8 percent. The number of jobless dropped to 215,010, which is the lowest figure since June 1997, while the number of vacancies increased to over 323,500. Last November, unemployment stood at 3.5 percent. Czech unemployment is the lowest in the European Union, according to Eurostat data, with a lack of workers helping push up wages quickly and adding inflationary pressures to the domestic economy. The lowest rate of unemployment, 1.8 percent, is in the Pardubice region, while the highest rate is in the region of Moravia-Silesia and Ústí nad Labem with 4.3 percent of people out of work. In Prague, the rate of unemployment came in at 1.9% where there were officially 65,009 open vacancies registered with the Labor Office. The central bank has lifted interest rates at its last four policy meetings but is expected to pause at its last sitting this year on Dec. 20. Author: red
The Security Information Service of the Czech Republic, also called Bezpečnostní Informační Služba or BIS, announced that in the last five years they have exposed dozens of Russian and Chinese spies. BIS Director Michal Koudelka said that BIS have also uncovered an entire espionage network belonging to Russian Special Services. “We had an extremely successful period of cooperation with Czech security forces and foreign partners,” he stated. According to the Director of the Czech Security Service, they have prevented and stopped the activities of “dozens of Russian and Chinese intelligence officers” or else recommended denying them accreditation or expelled them using so-called “silent methods.” At the beginning of this year, the BIS reported that “they have successfully exposed a network of one of the Russian special services and fully paralyzed the network’s activities.” Koudelka brought up the three diplomats that were expelled from the country as a joint response of European countries to the poisoning of former Russian spymaster Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England. Koudelka said the expelled Russians were officers of Russian Intelligence working in the Czech Republic “under diplomatic cover.” Koudelka also spoke about the agency’s contribution to the fight against terrorism. “According to Israeli and American colleagues, we...
For the very first time, the Czech Republic has ranked in the top twenty most expensive shopping streets in the world. Na Příkopě advanced to the 19th spot in this year’s ranking. The average monthly rental per square metre is almost six thousand crowns. The results come from a study conducted by Cushman & Wakefield. Cushman & Wakefield annually evaluates 446 of the most popular shopping destinations in 65 different countries. The ranking lists the most expensive shopping streets in each country. According to this study, the average monthly rent per square metre on Na Příkopě street amounts to 230 euros (about 5980 CZK), up by five percent from the previous year. The most expensive street in the world is Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay, followed by the upper part of Fifth Avenue in New York. In third place was New Bond Street in London, which is the most expensive street in Europe. The annual rent on Na Příkopě amounts to about one-tenth of the rent on Fifth Avenue. “Among the most expensive streets in the Czech Republic are Na Příkopě and Pařížská Street. While Pařížská is the destination of luxury brands, Na Příkopě is a significant street from the point of...
Tens of thousands of Czechs rallied in Prague on Saturday calling for Prime Minister Andrej Babiš to resign as the country marked the 29th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution that toppled the communist regime. Babiš has been charged with misusing European Union subsidies for a farm he transferred to family members, including his son, Andrej Babis Jr. The Czech leader denies wrongdoing. His son told Czech news portal Seznam Zpravy this week he was kept in Crimea against his will so he couldn’t be questioned in the case. Babiš has said his son, who lives in Switzerland, is mentally ill and in Crimea voluntarily. “It is inadmissible that someone under investigation and a StB collaborator is prime minister,” said Mikulas Minar, head of a group that organised a protest by around 20,000 people in the city centre. The Czech premier vowed Friday he would “never resign, never” before leaving to meet his son in Switzerland. Author: red
Czech Pirate Party candidate Zdeněk Hřib was elected on Thursday as Prague mayor by the city assembly. A total of 39 members of the 65-seat city assembly supported his candidacy. Hřib was jointly nominated by the Pirate Party and the movements of United Forces for Prague and Prague for Itself, which formed a ruling coalition following the October municipal election in the capital. “I promise that I will treat my duties with due humility and responsibility. [Such an approach] is also needed to address the long-standing problems and challenges that Prague is facing. I believe that I will manage to create a new style of relations with the opposition and local residents,” Hřib said after the election, as broadcast by the local television. Hřib, 37, was born in the town of Slavicin, located near the border with Slovakia. He has been living in Prague since 1999. Hřib studied medicine at the Charles University in Prague, afterward he worked in several medical companies. Since 2013, he has been a member of the Pirate Party, which is the third largest political force in the national parliament’s lower house. Author: red
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s younger son claims he was forcibly detained in Crimea by his father’s associates at the time of the investigation of the Stork’s Nest affair. Babiš Senior has been intermittently under investigation since 2015 wherein the prime minister was accused of concealing his ownership of the Čapí Hnízdo (Storks Nest) farm and attached convention centre in order to illegally obtain €2 million in EU subsidies meant for small businesses. Čapí Hnízdo was owned by Agrofert, a Prague-based conglomerate holding company owned by Andrej Babiš, which would have been ineligible for the small business subsidies. In 2007 ownership of the property was transferred to a small anonymous company which was able to apply for the subsidies, but it was later revealed that the shareholders in the new company were Babiš Junior and his sister Adriana; Babiš Senior’s partner – now his wife – Monika; and Monika’s brother Martin Herodes. A brief interview with Seznam reports that Babis’s son, who is also named Andrej, was coerced into traveling to Crimea on a vacation that turned into an “abduction.” He said he had spent some time in a psychiatric institution in the past. Babiš Jr. also revealed that he...
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Saturday he had proposed restoring writer Milan Kundera’s Czech nationality, stripped from him by the country’s former communist regime nearly four decades ago. Kundera, whose novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” was turned into a 1987 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis, became a naturalized French citizen after emigrating when he was prevented from publishing in his native country. “He really deserves to have his citizenship again,” Babis told Czech CTK agency in Paris where he was attending a commemoration of the 1918 armistice to end WWI. Kundera, now 89, and his wife Vera, were stripped of their nationality in 1979 by the communist regime of then Soviet-era Czechoslovakia. They emigrated to France in 1975. The author’s “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” published in 1979 explored how citizens lived under the regime. His own life had been under surveillance by the StB secret police. His first novel “The Joke” — his take on the one-party state — led to a ban on his publishing at home. Kundera, born in 1929 in Brno, maintained a complex relationship with his homeland even after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 ended one-party rule in Prague....
The October share of unemployed people declined to a new all-time low of 2.8%. This should be this year’s low, but some space for a decline next year might be possible due to structural changes in the labour market Previous figures from the Czech Labour Office reported an unemployment rate of 3% for September and 3.1% for August. The lack of labour market capacities in terms of job vacancies remained substantial, but it increased just slightly from 316,000 to less than 317,000. The lack of employees motivates companies to look for an alternative solution, which is reflected in a higher offer of part-time jobs. According to the Czech Statistical Office, the number of employees working part-time has increased by 20,000 year-on-year in the second quarter of this year. They are usually pension-age workers around 65, or younger in the 25-29 age group. The lowest unemployment rate in October – 1.8 percent – was recorded in the Pardubice Region. The South Bohemian and Plzeň regions had jobless levels of 1.9 percent while in Prague it was 2.0 percent. At the other end of the scale, 4.4 percent of the workforce in the Moravian Silesian Region and 4.3 percent in the Ústí nad Labem...
Next week the government will discuss the non-accession to the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, Foreign Minister Tomáš Petříček (CSSD) told the press. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) said that the treaty blurs the distinction between legal and illegal migration, and Petříček also had reservations about the document. The United States withdrew from the treaty last year, and Austria and Hungary also refused to sign it. The government was debating the document today and instructed the Foreign Minister to prepare the materials for the final resolution next week. According to Petříček, it is clear that the cabinet will not support the pact. The Foreign Minister also told reporters that the government must submit its decision to the Chamber of Deputies by November 15. “We do not like, for example, the ambiguous distinction between illegal and legal migrants, the ambiguity of social rights, or the fact that the compact does not mention the forced return of illegal migrants,” Petříček said in a press statement. In his opinion, the Czech Republic should definitely retreat from the pact. “I believe that we can, and it will be up to the Czech government to duly defend our position so that...
In recent years, Prague has seen a huge surge in the number of people offering their rooms or apartments for rent. Over the past five years, Airbnb and other similar platforms are estimated to have increased their offer 20-fold. A quarter of the apartments in central Prague are listed on sites such as Airbnb, say city officials, who blame the services for helping fuel a 50 percent jump in property values since 2013. Residents have petitioned the local government to boost oversight of short-term rentals, and increased regulation of Airbnb Inc. was a central issue in October municipal elections. Candidates pledged to raise taxes, tighten rules, and limit the number of nights flats can be rented each year. Airbnb says it welcomes regulation and insists it’s helped reduce prices for visitors while offering a more personalized experience than staying in a hotel. Some economists caution that politicians should be careful in regulating the services. Airbnb and smaller rivals have helped fuel a tourist boom that pumps $5 billion a year into the Czech economy. That’s little consolation for Czechs who’ve seen the median cost of housing surge to 11 times the country’s average annual salary, the highest level in Europe, according to consulting...
The lower house of the Czech Parliament began debating a bill that could give same-sex couples the right to marry. The bill was drafted by a group of lawmakers across the political spectrum. It is supported by the coalition center-left government of Prime Minister Andrej Babis. The amendment follows a country-wide debate led by the Jsme fér (We Are Fair) campaign, promoting the fair treatment of same-sex couples. 67% of Czechs support marriage equality while 97% of Czech gays and lesbians want the chance to get married. A number of European nations have legalized same-sex marriage, most recently Austria, but the Czech Republic could become the first post-Communist member of the European Union to do so. The Czech Republic has been allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter registered partnerships since 2006. Unlike neighboring Poland and Slovakia, the Czech Republic is one of Europe’s most secular societies and religious groups have a relatively weak voice. Author: red
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