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Prague City Council has approved a proposal to join other big European cities in calling on the EU executive arm to better and more uniformly regulate short-term accommodation platforms targeting tourists, such as Airbnb.

The lower house of parliament has approved a new legislation amendment, which would make it easier for district authorities to remove aging car wrecks abandoned in the streets of Czech towns and cities.

The Czech Republic’s minister of finance, Alena Schillerová, says she does not fear retaliation from the United States over the Prague government’s planned digital tax, which is aimed at boosting the state coffers by taxing advertising by global internet giants such as Google and Facebook.

Over 80 percent of Czech companies with ten or more employees provide their staff with mobile phones, tablets or laptops with access to the internet, according to a new survey carried out by the Statistical Office of the European Communities, the Eurostat.

The Czech economy is increasingly dependent on foreign labour. According to figures released by the Czech Statistics Office foreign workers made up 13 percent of the labour force last year. In 2010 it was just 6 percent. In the course of the past decade their number has more than doubled.

Some 22 million tourists visited the Czech Republic last year, a slight rise in a long-term growth trend, according to preliminary data compiled by the state agency CzechTourism. While foreign visitors are welcome, simply increasing their number each year is no longer the main goal.

A planned online system to sell permits to use the Czech Republic’s motorways will cost around CZK 401 million, not including value-added tax, over a four-year period, the Czech News Agency reported.

The e-shop Košík.cz and Mattoni have started testing a deposit system on PET bottles, available on the online sales platform. Customers will be able to choose whether to order Mattoni bottled water in a classic PET bottle or in a returnable. The PET bottles returned will be recycled and put to use many times over.

Almost every fifth domestic company faced a cyberattack last year, a rise of 20 percent year on year, according to data released by the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ). The most common form of cyberattack was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS).

Czechs spend more money on eating out than people in most neighbour states, the news site Novinky.cz wrote on Wednesday, citing a report by the Statistical Office of the European Communities, Eurostat.