Czech press survey - February 10

He reacts to the fresh decision by the European Court of Human Rights that Prague pay compensation to Kinsky, who has died meanwhile, for violating his right to a just court procedure.

In 2003, when a Czech court returned a part of the claimed property to Kinsky, politicians launched a joint crusade to prevent further similar verdicts, Leschtina writes.

President Vaclav Klaus then called for an active and self-confident reaction, PM Vladimir Spidla wanted to have the constitution changed in defence against Kinsky´s claims and then MP [and current PM] Petr Necas challenged the sanity of the judges involved, Leschtina writes.

The police, controlled by the then interior minister Stanislav Gross, wiretapped Kinsky´s lawyer - only because he was defending his client´s interests, Leschtina adds.

It became clear how much politicians were ready to comply with the public´s resentment of returns of property to noble families, Leschtina says.

At present, the leftist opposition has taken the same approach to the church property return. On the other hand, the government MPs must be admired for striving for the church restitution bill´s success in parliament. If they do not fail in the last moment, they will deserve great ovations, Leschtina says.

In Lidove noviny, Zbynek Petracek discusses the Slovak parliament´s rejection of the government´s proposal that October 28 (when Czechoslovakia was established in 1918) be declared a national holiday, replacing September 1 (when the Slovak constitution was passed in 1992).

In 2018, when Prague will mark the centenary of Czechoslovakia´s birth, no national holiday will be celebrated in Slovakia. It is meaningless to reproach Slovaks for this or emphasise in a paternalist way that there would have been no September 1, 1992 without October 28, 1918, Petracek says.

Twenty years after Czechoslovakia´s split, both the Czech Republic and Slovakia are in NATO, in the EU and in the Schengen system. The two nations´ coexistence is better than in the past, Petracek adds.

Czech Education Minister Josef Dobes has scrapped one of the two projects that have come under the EC´s criticism as nonsensical, but he surprisingly keeps afloat the other one, named Okno and aimed to enhance "low skilled" people´s financial literacy through advertisements in media, Bohumil Kartous writes elsewhere in Hospodarske noviny.

He reacts to controversies accompanying the Czech drawing of EU money for projects within two operational programmes supervised by Dobes´s ministry.

Asked what he would change in the Okno project for it to become acceptable for the EC, Dobes answered that he will go to Brussels to "consult" the project, Kartous said.

Dobes will go to Brussels to discuss a dead project. He probably plans to tell EU commissioner Laszlo Andor that he has only inherited the troubles with money drawing from his predecessor and that Andor will praise his efforts to put the things right, Kartous writes.

In fact, however, EU insiders say a condition for the EC´s unblocking the suspended flow of money is a change at the Czech Education Ministry´s helm, Kartous says.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz