Czech press survey - January 4

Prague - From politicians' viewpoint, the good times for church restitutions have not come for 22 years, but now it seems that a compromise solution may be in sight, Jiri Leschtina writes in Hospodarske noviny.

If the plan fails this time, too, church dignitaries will not have a single reason to hope that in a year or two or at any time in the future they will not hear: "just bad times," Leschtina writes.

This government has a chance of going down into history. It may become a cabinet that reprieved past wrongdoings despite the opposition of 70 percent of the general public, Leschtina writes.

It should fulfil the law from 1990s in which the state pledged to implement church restitutions, he adds.

The main mistakes were already made by the governments of the Social Democrats who are now criticising Prime Minister Petr Necas's centre-right government for being unable to get the money from the EU, Vaclav Dolejsi writes in Mlada fronta Dnes, analysing the refusal of the EU to pay further subsidies to the Czech Education Ministry over defects in their use.

When the socialists were thinking of where the cash flow should go, they came up with the absurd 26 channels in the form of operational programmes, Dolejsi writes.

In fact, it has been sufficient for large European countries to have about five of them. In the Czech Republic, almost every ministry and regional authority would like to have their own programmes, their own money, he adds.

Now experts are newly proposing only four programmes, for hard investments such as roads, soft investments such as social affairs, educational programmes and a regional programme for all regions, Dolejsi writes.

Now the basic questions asks whether politicians will nod to this, he adds.

Writer and exile publisher Josef Skvorecky who died in Toronto in the night aged 87, meant by Czech character that Czechs should be part of the West, Martin Weiss writes in Lidove noviny.

In this, he shared the same values as former president Vaclav Havel, Weiss writes.

Both of them are also evidence that the middle class as a social group not only cannot be destroyed easily, but it is still able to deliver elites to the nation, he adds.

Neither Skvorecky nor Havel were ever Communists, even the reform-minded ones, Weiss writes.

As a person who desperately looked for someone one can respect and listen to under the Communist regime, "I will be always personally grateful," Weiss writes. Author: CTK
www.ctk.cz

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