Budget talks underway; location of Prague’s ‘mega-hospital’ confirmed; norovirus outbreak suspected at Czech spa
The Czech government held its first post-summer recess cabinet meeting on Monday, with the 2027 budget top of the agenda. Throughout the week, ministers have been holding one-on-one talks with Finance Minister Alena Schillerova, with many of them emerging from the closed talks with promises of budget increases for their individual portfolios. Talks are still in the preliminary stages, and the draft budget should be submitted by the government by the end of September, with the ruling ANO party flagging healthcare and transport infrastructure as its two top priorities. Looking at some of the key announcements, Defence Minister Jaromir Zuna of the far-right SPD party said he expects defence spending to increase to 191 billion Czech crowns (about 7.9 billion euros) next year, thus reaching 2 per cent of GDP in contrast to this and the previous year. On the culture front, Minister Oto Klempir said he was striving to increase his department’s budget to 20 billion crowns (around 825 million euros) in 2027. And while the Culture Ministry has long been expected to start funding directly Czech public media from January next year as the government prepares to scrap licence fees, recent statements from officials close to finance chief Schillerova suggest a new model might be chosen: specifically, that the cancellation of licence fees might first be postponed, and that the nearly 8 billion crowns intended for Czech TV and Czech Radio would come not from the Culture Ministry, but from the General Treasury Administration – a separate chapter for public expenses that are not assigned to specific ministries in advance that includes, for instance, emergency funding to deal with natural disasters.
A key campaign promise of the current government, the Czech capital’s future “mega-hospital” will be built on the grounds of the current Kralovske Vinohrady University Hospital (FNKV) in Prague, the government announced this week. “It’s not like the entire campus will be demolished, we will only use part of the campus where there’s currently unused land,” vowed Health Minister Adam Vojtech as he unveiled the wide-ranging plans for the new hospital, where some of the current FNKV departments along with those of other Prague hospitals are set to be relocated. Just weeks ago, the government commissioned the ministries of health and defence to transfer the land to the Defence Ministry by the end of August. Plans to designate the new facility as a military hospital to include the costs in reported defence expenditures – and meet NATO requirements – have been met with scepticism by some who point out that mostly civilians will be treated there, and that Prague already has the Central Military Hospital (UVN).
The Regional Hygiene Station of the Olomouc region, in eastern Czechia, confirmed four new cases of people falling ill with what initial findings suggest could be noroviruses, bringing the total number of cases to 115 patients since the start of the outbreak at the Priessnitz spa in Jesenik earlier this month. “The regional hygiene station is recording a decrease in the number of newly reported cases,” a spokeswoman said, pointing to the effectiveness of the anti-epidemic measures taken by regional authorities and the spa’s management since the first cases began emerging, and highlighting that the risk of transmission to the wider population remained low. “Within a few days we managed to prevent the spread of the infection”, meanwhile assured the spa’s director Roman Provaznik, who also criticised the spread of fake news and alarmist statements on social media about the situation at his establishment. The cause of the outbreak remains unclear to date, however, and lab examinations are still ongoing to determine how more than 100 people fell ill with intestinal flu-like symptoms.
