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Poor pensioners who worried about their higher and higher rents can now breath a sigh of relief. The government took a neutral stance on the parliament-proposed plan to slow down rent deregulation, which in practice means that MPs will pass it. But ministers do not deserve much applause for their social feeling. In fact, their sluggishness means failure. A failure for people who wanted to move for work, a failure for house owners, but also for the tenants themselves who will have to deal with the problem again sometime in the future. And we’ll probably witness an epilogue at the court in Strasbourg. House owners suing the Czech Republic now have another argument why to demand dozens of billions inContinue Reading

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We are going to have a government composed of experts. The incumbent government coalition and the ČSSD are each supposed to nominate the same number of ministers. The ministers should have no party membership cards, but here I dare predict that this “fundamentalistic” party-free vision will not be fully met. The president is going to come up with his version of a government as well – for the case that the two large parties fail to come to terms. Will there be any common candidate among the experts proposed by the ČSSD, the ODS and the Castle? And why an expert cannot have any party membership card? Is he going to get it later for merits? Or does he haveContinue Reading

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“Nothing can be ruled out completely,” says Otmar Issing, German professor of economics and a member of the European Central Bank governing board. “But it will not happen, the euro will not disappear. The costs would be enormous and countries would lose on that in the end.” Issing knows what he’s talking about. His book about the future of the euro is regarded as the best piece of work of its kind. But Issing admits that many things have turned the wrong way up since the book came out nearly a year ago. There are even unofficial opinions in Brussels saying that some countries might want to leave the eurozone. “This is indisputably the most difficult moment since the euroContinue Reading

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From the very beginning, the Czech presidency had to deal with the burden of “2G” – the two crises: Gaza and gas. The bombing of Israel and the couner strike in the Gaza strip, as well as the interrupted supplies of Russian gas via Ukraine required an immediate reaction. In both cases, the Czech presidency, together with the European Commission and backed by EU countries, launched diplomatic missions in the Middle East and in Kiev and Moscow. The rapid reaction of the Czech government was to a great extent enabled not only by its geographical location and historical experience, but also by the main presidency priority – we have called energy security a top priority long before 1 January despiteContinue Reading

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When the whole nation unanimously condemns the Canadian diplomacy, one needs to be alert. Aren’t we giving into a summer hysteria? Aren’t we provoking ethnic intolerance by headlines like “Canada imposed visas (on Czechs) due to Roma migration”? Don’t we also have, like the Canadians do, some homework left to do? Isn’t recalling an ambassador an exaggerated reaction? Everything suggested already in late June that Canada will introduce the visas. Opposite information was only coming from a single source: the Foreign Ministry. So either the Canadians deliberately pulled their counterparts’ leg, or the Czernin Palace was unable to decode the information. The shocking move is a result of both the failure of the Czech Foreign Ministry and of Canadian “betrayal”.Continue Reading