Current Affairs | All stories

The weekend conference of the Social Democratic Party bolstered the position of party leader Bohuslav Sobotka, approved new party statues and sharpened hostilities between the two strongest parties in government –the Social Democrats and Andrej Babiš’ ANO party. I asked commentator Jiří Pehe what he considered the most important message of the two day meeting.

A two-day conference of the ruling Social Democratic Party kicks off on Friday with the election of a new leadership. The conference is expected to confirm Bohuslav Sobotka party leader and outline a strategy which would offset the growing influence of the party’s coalition partner ANO ahead of next year’s regional elections.

The Czech crown has slumped to more than 10 year lows against the US dollar and the impact could go a lot wider than just two way trade with the world’s biggest economy with the ripples reaching Asia and Latin America.

President Milos Zeman is marking two years in office as the country’s first-ever directly elected head of state. His first years in office have been marked by a succession of scandals, a slump in popularity and negative publicity in the media at home and abroad. I asked the head of the STEM polling agency Jan Hartl about the president’s performance, his influence on Czech politics and his style of leadership.

As President Miloš Zeman prepares to celebrate two years in office with a grand ball at Prague Castle on Friday, Czech lawmakers are debating a government-proposed bill to curb his powers. But, while the president has repeatedly come under fire from all sides for pushing his powers to the limit and beyond, curbing them may not prove easy.

One of the biggest Czech film festivals, Febiofest, which is to kick off in Prague next week, has officially joined the campaign to release Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian director who has been imprisoned in Russia. A leading activist opposed to the Russian annexation of Crimea, Sentsov was arrested in May last year on charges of preparing terrorist attacks. Despite pressure from various authorities, such as the European Film Academy and Amnesty International, his lawyer has been unable to secure his release.

The fate of nine foreign workers, among them one Czech national, who were kidnapped by terrorists in an attack on an oil-field in Libya last Friday, remains at the center of media attention. The Czech foreign minister admitted on Monday that the situation was exceptionally serious and that with high probability the group was in the hands of the brutal militant group responsible for the recent execution of 21 Egyptian Copts.

The Bubny Railway Station in Prague, which saw tens of thousands of Czech Jews leave for the ghettoes and Nazi death camps, is set to become a new Holocaust Memorial. A ceremony at the future Memorial of Silence on Monday was attended by Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman, representatives of the Israeli, US and German embassies as well as Holocaust survivors. I spoke to Tomáš Bouška, coordinator of the Shoah memorial and first asked him about the special “sculpture” being unveiled:

A Czech national and eight others missing since last Friday following a terrorist attack on an oil field in Libya, could be in the hands of Islamic State, according to a statement released on Monday by the Austrian Foreign Ministry. Czech officials have not gone as far, saying they were in the process of gathering information, sending envoys to the region.

With escalating tensions between the West and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Czech top officials have welcomed the possible extension of the US-European operation Atlantic Resolve to the Czech Republic. The Czech prime minister said his country had a vested interest in joint military training with NATO allies and could offer some of its bases for this purpose.