Summary of newsmakers from the previous day 8. 6. 2005

Government´s bill on land deprivation passed

Today the government passed a bill that is to speed up construction of roads, motorways or railways for a public benefit and enables deprivation of private lands, which are necessary for the construction. The bill, submitted by the Ministry for Local Development, is to enforce the state to deprive private owners of their lands, in case they are needed, for a just remedy.

Klaus supports Czech food producers

President Václav Klaus is going to support two key requirements of Czech farmers and food producers. On Monday meeting he came to an agreement with representatives of the Agrarian Chamber of the Czech Republic. „Particular actions against the policy of business chains concerning domestic suppliers will be specified next week,“ said Jan Veleba, the Agrarian Chamber´s president, to EURO OnLine. Furthermore, Mr. Klaus is to encourage those projects that will urge our consumers to prefer Czech food products when shopping.

European money in jeopardy

Instead of that the state administration created good conditions for a coherent flow of money coming from the European funds, it is going backwards. Thus, Czechia could lose most of the money from the European structural funds allocated for 2004, that is up to 10 milliard CZK. The reason being is that appropriate ministries and submitters of winner projects have not yet signed contracts on drawing money from the European funds. Nevertheless, without such a contract no one can conclude agreements with suppliers. The projects, which were accepted last year, have to draw money for 2004 by the second term of 2006.

Common Fisheries Policy rules need to be adhered to

On 30th May 2005 the fourth annual report of the European Commission on serious breach of rules within the Common Fisheries Policy was released. It states that a number of recorded illegal actions of this kind increased from 6,756 in 2002 to 9,502 in 2003 (see Report 05/183). Based on these figures, acquired from reports of member countries, it is quite clear that in spite of considerable efforts directed at a higher participation of parties involved in fisheries management and measures taken in order to improve law enforcement there is a need to develop even greater activity in preventing subjects from a potential violance of rules.