Transparency International Czech Republic asks Czech MPs to push forward debate and adopt reform of political party financing. The draft act has been waiting for its turn in the Chamber of Deputies for quite some time. The bill proposes establishing of an authority that would monitor political party financing, impose sanctions and be in charge of public oversight over political finance, among others. One of the problems TI Czech Republic mentioned in their analysis relates to "transparent accounts" of political parties; most political parties made publicly accessible information on money inflows only, and not the outflows...

According to the recently published European Commission's European Economic Forecast, the acceleration of economic activity expected in the EU in 2016 is minor: GDP in the euro area is forecast to expand by 1.7% compared to 1.6% last year. Growth should pick-up further to 1.9% in 2017 but this will depend crucially on a rebound in investment, which has so far remained elusive and is sensitive to the materialisation of the risks surrounding the central scenario. As for the Czech Republic, as an exceptional boost to growth from EU co-financed investment fades, growth is expected to slow to 2.3% in 2016 before picking up again to 2.7% in 2017. The headline government deficit is expected to fall to 1.1% of GDP in 2016 and then to 1% in 2017, the forecast says.

At its on 4 February, the Bank Board of the Czech National Bank decided unanimously to keep interest rates unchanged at technical zero. The Bank Board decided to continue using the exchange rate as an additional instrument for easing the monetary conditions and confirmed the CNB’s commitment to intervene on the foreign exchange market if needed to weaken the koruna so that the exchange rate of the koruna is kept close to CZK 27 to the euro. Also, the Czech central bank estimates GDP growth in 2015 at 4.7% and according tthe CNB's forecast, the growth of the Czech economy will slow markedly in 2016.

The Czech Republic moved up 3 places in the recently published Index of Economic Freedom, a global ranking of 178 countries compiled by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. The country improved scores in categories "Freedom From Corruption", "Monetary Freedom", "Government Spending", and "Fiscal Freedom"...