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The European Commission has launched proceedings before court action against the Czech Republic over Visapoint, the Foreign Ministry´s system for foreigners´ registration. The move comes following a complaint from Czech Ombudsman Pavel Varvařovský who alerted the EC to problems with the system’s operation and claimed that there were no legal grounds for making such a system compulsory to applicants for long-term residence. The EC is expecting a response from the Czech authorities within ten weeks. After that it will decide whether or not to launch proceedings over breach of EU law.

Two companies from Zlín have been selected to build the state-of-the-art scientific center Biocev in the village of Vestec near Prague. Zlínstav and POZIMOS signed an almost 750 million crown contract with Charles University and the Department of Molecular Genetics of the Academy of Science on Wednesday. The biotechnological and biomedical center BIOCEV will be mostly paid for from EU funds. The construction of the top-of-the-line international research and innovation should begin within a month and should be finished by the spring of 2015.

Czech Rail has increased security measures on the country’s railway routes in response to the threat of terrorist attacks in Europe by al-Qaeda. Jakub Ptačinský, the spokesman for the Railway Infrastructure Agency revealed the news on Monday. The spokesman did not elaborate on the measures, saying if they were made public, it would defeat the purpose. He said the agency had received the warning of a possible threat in Europe several days ago. BIS, the country’s counter-intelligence service, however, stressed there was no immediate danger in the Czech Republic.

The German daily Bild reported there was a threat of attacks on high-speed tracks, tunnels and trains, citing a call between al-Qaeda members intercepted by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA). The German Interior Ministry, responded, however, by saying the security situation in the country had not worsened and that security measures as reported by Bild had not been taken. BIS spokesman Jan Šubert said Czech counter-intelligence had not received any information from foreign partners about the Czech Republic being targeted.

Czechs who worked in Slovakia or for Slovak firms prior to the split of Czechoslovakia look set to see their old-age pensions brought up to the level of those received in the Czech Republic. The Senate’s Constitutional and Legal Committee on Wednesday approved the change, which will see such retirees receive a supplement to their Czech pensions. A European Union court had ruled that such top-ups contravened EU practice; however, the Czech Constitutional Court said the EU had made no provision for pension disparities in the case of the breakup of a shared state.

The Regional Development Ministry is planning to seek damages of 56 million crowns n the highly anticipated corruption trial of former Central Bohemian governor David Rath, which begins on Wednesday. The amount is equivalent to the funds paid out by ministry for projects in the Central Bohemia region, which were covered by grants from the European Union, Czech Radio reported on Tuesday. After last year’s arrest of Mr. Rath and a number of his associates who were accused of manipulating EU-funded projects, the European Commission refused to reimburse the Czech Republic.

The Czech Republic will buy 100,000 tonnes of oil for its emergency reserves by mid-2014 the internet news site ihned.cz reported on Tuesday. The Administration of State Material Reserves will declare an open tender for deliveries worth around 1.6 billion crowns. Only reliable suppliers with at least a three-year history in the business and three or more similar orders implemented in the past will be considered. Price will be the main criterion.

The interim government headed by Prime Minister Jiří Rusnok on Wednesday approved an amendment aimed at simplifying the penitentiary system. Under the proposal, different categories of prisons, ranging from low to maximum security, would be reduced from four to two. Those who committed serious crimes would remain under high security, while punishment for lesser crimes would be served in prisons with less strict regimes. Reforms in the penal code are meant to bring the Czech Republic closer to Western European counterparts.

The European Court of Human Rights has recognized inhumane and degrading treatment of a suspect in police custody in the Czech Republic. The ruling condemned the actions of police officers in the west Bohemian town of Aš, who arrested a fifty-eight year-old man in 2010 and painfully tied his legs and allowed him to hang by his bound arms from a fixture on the wall. The man’s lawyer all said that he was beaten on his back, head and chest. The man has asked for 100,000 crowns in compensation, but the European court has not ruled on that yet, pending a possible appeal as well as the results of deliberations in a Czech court on the same case.

The EU’s Court of Justice on Thursday ruled that the Czech Republic had failed to meet its obligations arising from an EU railway directive. The court criticized the maximum fees set by the Czech Finance Ministry for using railway infrastructure, as well as a lack of incentives for the infrastructure’s operator to cut costs. Under EU law, the Czech authorities are obliged to implement the findings as soon as possible or face penalization.

The Czech Republic was the worst country in the EU last year in terms of drawing and reporting European funding, according to the European Commission’s annual report. The document criticizes the Czech finance ministry’s inability to carry out proper checks of money received from the EU’s operational funds. As a result of the ministry’s failure to install a functional system of oversight, recipients and bodies distributing funding made a number of mistakes and even committed fraud, resulting in significant losses for the state budget. The ministry admitted past mistakes, saying that most of them happened because audits were carried out by the institutions that distributed the money, not by the finance ministry itself.