Summary of newspapers of the previous day – 2. 2. 2011

Chamber of Deputies supported proposal for sale of agricultural land to foreigners

The Chamber of Deputies supported a government amendment of foreign exchange act which will enable citizens of the EU states to buy agricultural land in the Czech Republic in the first reading today. A ban of its sale was negotiated by the Czech Republic in the accession into the EU, the exception end in May this year. Now, according to the law foreigners must not buy agricultural land, however, tens of thousands hectares of Czech agricultural land are already owned by foreign legal entities which have a registered place in the CR. By contrast to the CR, the neighbouring states have asked Brussels for prolongation of the exception. “It is another manifestation of permanently defensive agrarian policy of the government”, a chief of the Agrarian Chamber Jan Veleba reacted.

Babiš: Polish chickens full of water damage Czech agriculture

The heads of food industry got involved into an argument at the Retail Summit for who cooperates with whom and what is the quality of Czech foods. Conflicts among farmers, producers and sellers are lead at a personal level and they behave like three political parties. At least, an agent of Globus, Petr Vyhnálek, and a chief of food-processing firm Agrofert, Andrej Babiš, who stated that at Prague Retail Summit, think it. A part of two-day meeting of tops of Czech and foreign retailers was a discussion on the topic “Cooperation or confrontation” in the evening on Tuesday.

Owing to dioxin Germans significantly tighten up conditions for producers

On Wednesday, German government in connection with the recent dioxin scandal in the country approved first tightened measures for feed producers and laboratories which concern their reporting duties. They should prevent repeating of this affair with occurrence of carcinogenic dioxin in eggs, poultry and pig meat in the future. Owing to that thousands farms were temporarily closed in Germany and consumers´ interest in these food considerably decreased. German feed producers will henceforth compulsorily report results of all tests of their products to authorities, not only of those excess limits, and the reporting duty in case of findings of increased values of dangerous substance will concern also private laboratories.

ÚOHS opened three new administrative procedures with chain stores

The antimonopoly office (Office for the Protection of Competition - ÚOHS) has opened three new administrative procedures with chin stores according to the law on significant market power. Hynek Brom, a vice-chairman of the antimonopoly office said it to ČTK. He did not mention which administrative procedures are concerned. Two procedures refer to a breach of thirty-day payback period, the other case to forbidden practices in supplier-customer relations. “It is dealt with a case when a supplier shares in financing something without an adequate consideration. Generally, this case is connected with a certain type of payments”, Brom stated. The Office for the Protection of Competition performed also a local investigation in one of the firms when it secured necessary evidences in its seat.