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Labour costs in the Czech Republic grew in the fourth quarter of 2009 by more than almost any other EU country. Eurostat reported on Wednesday that hourly labour costs in the country had gone up by up 5.4% compared to the same period in 2008. Only Bulgaria, Austria and Poland showed higher growth, with 11.3, 6.5 and 5.7%, respectively. Growth of labour costs was negative in the other countries for which there is information available, primarily in Lithuania, where it fell by nearly 11%. Eurostat showed the average growth in the EU at 2.4% and in the Euro-zone at 2.2% year on year.

Anticorruption police are investigating two managerial employees of the office of the Southwest Regional Council for illegal distribution of grant money. Police believe that the two may have been involved in influencing the selection of projects that would benefit from several billion crowns in EU funding. At the behest of the police, the Ministry of Finance halted a nearly completed tender process for a series of public developmental projects in the Southwest region amounting to 3.8 billion crowns. A police raid of the office carried out at the end of last year did not result in any arrests. The charges of influencing a public tender and damaging the interests of the European Community carry sentences of up to 12 years imprisonment.

According to an assessment published by Business Europe, an EU association of employers, the Czech Republic is one of the EU countries that are successful in addressing the challenges posed by the global financial crisis. Business Europe’s assessment suggests that the Czech Republic’s economy is well on the way to catching up with the more advanced EU states. In the area of export, the Czech Republic ranks fourth amongst 29 countries that include EU member states as well as Norway and Switzerland. Among the weak points of the Czech economy, the assessment cited low productivity along with the cost of labor.

The Czech president, Václav Klaus, has warned that the EU is going through the gravest crisis in its history, following the adoption of the Lisbon treaty. In a written address to a eurosceptic party convention in Prague on Saturday, Mr Klaus said he believed civic and economic freedom in the European Union is at risk, as the bloc was adopting ever stronger regulatory measures under the pretence of combating the economic crisis. Mr Klaus also criticized the effects of what he calls “climate alarmism”.

President Václav Klaus is a staunch critic of further European integration. In 2003, he signed the Czech Republic’s accession treaty to the EU. However, he fiercely opposed the reform Lisbon treaty, which he eventually ratified last November as the last head of state of the bloc.

The watchdog organization Iuridicum Remedium is proposing that the European Directive for Data Retention be looked into by the Czech Constitutional Court to assess if it is in line with the Czech Constitution. The proposal, which has backing from 46 parliament deputies, aims to stop the mandatory storage of technical data by communication providers, implemented in 2006 on the grounds of the said EU directive. The watchdog’s Filip Pospíšil explains what data retention is exactly and how it could violate people’s right to privacy.

Plans are afoot for the dismissal of the country’s ambassador to the EU Milena Vicenová, Respekt reported on Monday. The weekly says that the news has been confirmed by politicians in the two strongest parties, the Civic and Social Democrats. Foreign Minister Jan Kohout himself has refused to comment. According to Respekt the official reason given was Ms. Vicenová’s lackluster performance in office. The diplomat herself said she had received no official information on her possible dismissal.

Former Czech soccer international Luboš Kubík has been hired as an assistant coach to the USA, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. Kubík, who will be going to the World Cup in South Africa with the US this year, played for Czechoslovakia against the Americans at the 1990 World Cup; he was also part of the Czech squad that reached the final of the 1996 European championship. The defensive midfielder played in the US league for Chicago Fire and Dallas Burn after stints at Fiorentina, Metz and Nuremberg.

Prague City Hall has announced that 950 million Czech crowns from EU funds are to go to projects that will improve and develop Prague public transportation. Projects for the construction of new tram lines, wheelchair accessibility in public transport or new bike lanes can be submitted to the city’s EU funds department. The Prague Transport Authority is also eligible for funds. Tram lines especially are in bad need of modernization and the EU funds will help facilitate Prague public transport, Milan Richter, Prague deputy mayor, told journalists. Decisions on which projects will receive funding will be announced this fall.

The Office of Naval Research World on Friday opened an office in Prague, its first in Central and Eastern Europe. The office will operate at the US embassy in Prague to which the ONR will move some of its London-based staff to look for worthy scientific research projects in the region. ONR provides grants and other funding sources for scientific research in exchange for access to it. The office operates in the US and 70 other countries and works with researchers at universities and in the private sector.

Minister of the Interior Martin Pecina has complained about insufficient European support in the country’s quarrel with Canada over the re-imposition of visas on Czechs. Mr. Pecina said on Thursday that he had called for solidarity from other EU members but had been disappointed by many of them and by the insufficiently strong stand of the executive European Commission. He was speaking at a meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels. Canada reintroduced visa requirements on Czechs in July 2009, citing the large numbers of asylum seekers. Prague has been seeking strong EU support to get the step reversed. The European Commission recommended in October that states introduce visas on Canadian diplomats unless it altered its position.