In the year of the COVID-19 crisis, Czechs must endure one more month of work for the state. After June 24, 2020, they will start earning money for themselves. Until then, for 175 days, they only work for the state. This is the least free year since 2000.
The Czech government banned manufacturers to sell respirators and masks to anyone but the legal entities established by the state. Public hospitals are NOT legal entities established by the state in the Czech Republic. Ouch.
2019 was a year of various activities at Liberální Institut. So what was the year like exactly ? Let’s have a brief overview.
This year, Prague will be celebrating the 30th spring since the fall of communism. It will also welcome a number of well-known friends of liberty as guests of Liberal Institute and Czech Students for Liberty.
Hearings, even outside the grilling season, are done in a similar fashion. When a committee invites a guest for an “exchange of views”, the way it is handled in the committee is by and large the same. MEPs are lectured by the Committee Chair how to use their five-minute slot and how to ask a question.
In an escalation of tensions between Japan and South Korea, Tokyo has moved forward with regulations on exports of chemicals to Korean technological companies like Samsung. This move is seen as a political calculation, given recent disputes of trade and negotiations between the two Asian nations.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Chairman of the European Research Group on the House of Commons, claimed that this treaty would make the UK a vassal state. It is difficult to not agree with him. The last treaties that gave jurisdiction to foreign courts were the aforementioned 19th-century treaties with China.
On June 23, 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU. If Czechs and Slovaks were able to separate an entire country, Czechoslovakia, in six months, surely Whitehall and Berlaymont can find a way to separate one EU member state sooner than in six years.
We commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact armies’ invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, an event that in many respects showed to the whole world the desperation of people struggling for self-determination under totalitarian regimes.
I’m writing this article from the point of view of a Czech libertarian. It’s meant for foreigners, not necessarily libertarians, to get a better grasp of Czech politics than what they can get from their usual sources of information.
