Current Affairs | All stories

The government-proposed budget reform is causing the ruling coalition serious problems. One minister has already resigned because of it, and there are indications of widespread social unrest in the coming weeks.

Since the time of the Roman army, chaplains have been involved in military service. In the Czech Republic, however, it is a fairly new phenomenon, as only five years ago to this day, on June 3 1998, the Defence Ministry and the Church signed an agreement to appoint priests and ministers to serve in the military. To celebrate this anniversary, an ecumenical service was held at the Church of St. John of Nepomuk in Prague's Hradcany district on Tuesday.

Should children be given the right to vote in the Czech Republic? The Christian Democrats - a member of the ruling coalition - argue that they should. A family voting rights proposal is now the subject of heated discussion in the Czech Republic. But just why are the Christian Democrats campaigning so fervently for this change in the Czech electoral system?

The Czech Defense Minister Jaroslav Tvrdik has resigned from office. In a dramatic 48 hours late last week the minister wavered between staying and going in the face of steep military budget cuts which he said would jeopardize his reform plans for the armed forces.

For the past couple of weeks, advertisements all over Prague have heralded the opening of a new hypermarket called Cesky sen, or the Czech Dream. The opening was advertised for Saturday, May 31, at the fairground in the Prague quarter of Letnany. But while hundreds of people turned up there expecting to discover their dream hypermarket, they didn't find it.

The sound of a clock ticking, a picture of a knot in an EU flag, and the words "Don't forget!" With these TV ads the government has launched the final stage of its campaign to get people to vote in the EU referendum in two weeks' time. A simple message, but right from the start the campaign has been heavily criticised by the opposition as superficial and naïve. So how does the government answer that criticism? My colleague Rob Cameron spoke to the person in charge of the campaign, the Foreign Ministry's Jana Adamcova.

The Czech Republic has been repeatedly criticised for a relatively high level of corruption. One of the problematic areas is government contracts and public tenders. The Office for Protection of Economic Competition is trying to set things right again but says loopholes in the law should be patched up first.

In this week's edition of our special series on the history of Czech Radio to mark the station's eightieth anniversary, Dita Asiedu looks at the period between the Communist takeover in 1948 and the Prague Spring that was crushed with the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

"I'm just trying to describe the current situation of our minority here in Czech society - I mean the transgender minority - because I think the situation could, for sure, be much better."

The first major changes in the Czech penal code since 1990 have been recently proposed by the government. How will this change the Czech crime scene and also what will be the impact of the Czech Republic's upcoming membership in the European Union? Tracy Burns has more.