Czech press survey - November 25

The European Commission suspects CEZ, J&T and Severoceske doly companies of unfair competition on the energy market and harming competition.

Weiss writes that the notion of a possible connection between the raid and Civic Democrat (ODS) chairman Mirek Topolanek's summer holiday in Tuscany, Italy, where he met leaders and lobbyists of Czech energy companies is not absurd at all.

Weiss writes that each of the few large players on the energy market has his own goals and the others stand in his way.

He writes that the state eventually created the players, it partially owns them and regulates.

"But they are so large that they themselves have started to colonise the state. There is a lot of information (opaque naturally) about who has an ally in this or another party and at a particular office," Weiss writes.

"The rivals are now waging their war with the help of their allies in the state apparatus - and also against the allies of the others, also in the state apparatus," Weiss writes.

In Mlada fronta Dnes, Jiri Sticky also mentions the "Tuscany connection" in the raid by Brussels anti-monopoly officials in three Czech energy companies today.

He says the Brussels bureaucrats could also find in computers photographs of participants in the Tuscany holiday and also replies to why CEZ the giant helps grow particularly the dwarfs from J&T and why Czech cases are solved by the police abroad, Sticky writes.

He mentions some of the "foreign" cases, such as the bribery prosecution of Viktor Kozeny in the United States, the claim by former Erste Bank managers that bribery was involved in the privatisation of the Czech and Slovak savings banks (CS and SS) that is to be investigated by FBI.

Meanwhile the British anti-corruption service is going to bring bribery charges in connection with the supply of Gripen fighters to the Czech military and the Swiss have decided to freeze the hundreds of millions on the accounts of a businessman who has been long connected with deals of the Prague Town Hall, Sticky writes.

The existence of small parties is beneficial because they force the election winner to take into consideration the existence of other ideological streams in society, Jiri Hanak writes in Pravo today.

The existence of small parties requires discussion between the large and small ones, Hanak writes.

He adds that discussion is the state of spirit, not something with which it is necessary to reconcile oneself when a government coalition is formed after elections while before no dirt thrown at the other parties was dirty enough, Hanak writes.

"Decency is only one just as the art of discussion. The large want to remove their inability by deleting the small parties," which is the best reason for the latter to remain in parliament, Hanak writes.

Autor: ČTK
www.ctk.cz