Morning Briefing │ Friday, February 9th, 2024

* JOB MARKET:

Unemployment in Czechia climbed to 4% in January, which is an increase of 0.3 percentage points month on month and 0.1 points year on year.

It is also the highest unemployment level since 2017, apart from the Covid-19 pandemic-stricken year of 2021, but still enough to be the second lowest unemployment level in the EU, the Czech labour office reported. In January 2022, the unemployment level was 3.6%.

* LAWS:

The lower house of the Czech parliament has supported changing the definition of rape in Czech law to sex without consent rather than sex by force or physical coercion.

Another change proposed by the draft law is that all sexual activity with children under 12 years of age always is treated as rape or assault, rather than the less serious criminal offense of sexual abuse.

* CZECHIA:

The tabloid Blesk continues to be the most-read Czech daily with an average of 584,000 readers per issue, according to a survey by the Czech Publishers’ Association released on Thursday.

Blesk is followed by Mladá fronta Dnes with around 381,000 readers and the Daily Sport with 146,000 readers.

* FOREIGN POLITICS:

Czech Defence Minister Jana Černochová arrived in Tel-Aviv on Thursday for talks with her Israeli counterpart Yoav Galant.

On the agenda was the security situation in the Middle East and Europe, defence-industrial cooperation between the two countries and acquisition projects, the ministry said in a press release.

* ENERGY:

Almost 40 percent of Czechs have reduced the temperature in their homes this winter due to high energy prices, suggests a survey carried out by the Ipsos Agency for the heating products company Stiebel Eltron.

In most cases, Czechs reduced their home temperature by two to three degrees Celsius.