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The Czech Parliament on Wednesday opened debate on the Lisbon Treaty signed in December of 2007 by the EU’s 27 member states. The treaty replaces the controversial EU Constitution, rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, and is expected to fundamentally alter the way the EU is run. Although Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek officially signed the document in Portugal last year, it is no secret that his Civic Democratic Party is far from happy with it. I asked political analyst Petr Just whether he anticipated problems in the course of its

News has emerged that the former Czech prime minister Stanislav Gross has failed his bar exam. For Gross, this latest story is just one of a series of negative reports that have appeared about the former PM ever since he hit the spotlight as the country’s youngest ever prime minister.

Free plane tickets around the Czech Republic, generous travel allowances, low- rent luxury flats in Prague– those are just a few of the many perks enjoyed by Czech deputies and senators. This week, the Prague Transport Authority decided to strip lawmakers of one of these privileges and make them pay for the use of public transport like everyone else, warning that any lawmaker caught without a ticket would be fined.

The first Czech soldier has died in action in what the United States calls the war on terror. He was the victim of a suicide bomber in southern Afghanistan on Monday; two other Czech soldiers were injured, one of them seriously.

Many capital cities are famed for their café culture, and Prague is no exception. At the turn of the twentieth century, writers like Karel Čapek and Franz Kafka would meet with artists, academics and politicians in the Czech capital’s cafes to expound their ideas over a cup of coffee - and maybe the smallest snifter of absinthe. Now a new exhibition called ‘Prague’s Coffeehouses and their World’ takes a look at the golden age of the city’s cafes, and attempts to recreate some of the magic such coffeehouses were said to have had at the turn of the

Stock markets around the world recorded heavy losses on Monday in reaction to the emergency bailout of US investment bank Bear Stearns. The Prague Stock Exchange was no exception, with the headline PX index dropping by almost 2.5 percent. Analysts said investors were responding to the unexpected collapse of the leading U.S. investment bank and the problems of the U.S. financial market in general. The Prague exchange saw something of a recovery on Tuesday, but the markets are still jittery. Jiří Staník is a senior analyst at the Prague-based investment

The Interior Ministry has come up with a new bill on citizenship which will make it easier for former Czech nationals to have their Czech citizenship returned. If it goes through, former Czech citizens who were stripped of their citizenship by the communist authorities will be able to have double nationality.

The violent suppression of freedom protests in Lhasa by the Chinese military over the weekend sparked a show of international solidarity with Tibet, with street protests in many world cities and governments appealing for restraint. In the Czech Republic, a country which overthrew communist rule less than two decades ago, the violence in Tibet has touched on a raw nerve.

More and more people are checking into the Czech Republic’s four and five star hotels. Last year, the number of people holidaying in the lap of luxury in this country rose by over ten percent to nearly 3.5 million. To respond to the surge in demand, tens of new and deluxe high-end hotels are planned. Prague alone can expect nearly 20 of them in the next couple of years. But will this phenomenon be felt outside of Prague in the regions?

Although drug abuse is a criminal offense in the Czech Republic, the existing legislation does not distinguish between hard and soft drugs, merely drawing a line between what it calls “a small amount of drugs” and “anything over that amount”. But what exactly is “a small amount” of drugs? The law fails to specify that and it has been up to the police to decide. Now the government has proposed an amendment to the penal code which would let offenders know when they are on dangerous ground. DL has the story: