Pistora, spokesman for Prague Archbishop Cardinal Vlk, said Vlk would like to acquaint Tlusty (senior ruling Civic Democrats, ODS) with the background documents on which the churches had based their negotiations on the bill. "Deputy Tlusty, on his part, will probably want to present his reservations about the bill," Pistora said. The date of the meeting is yet to be set. Under the bill the government approved a couple of months ago, the state is to return one-third of the property, confiscated by the Communist regime, to Largest number of children since 1993 born in CzechRep last year ...
Court orders execution of Prague Castle, St Vitus cathedral ... churches and religious orders and to give them 83 billion crowns in compensation for the rest in the following 60 years.
Along with the interests the sum would climb up to 270 billion crowns. In a lower house vote earlier this week, the opposition, along with four ODS rebels led by Tlusty, had the first reading of the bill removed from the agenda of the house's current session. The debate on it can take place in June at the earliest. To succeed, the bill needs support from all government deputies of whom there are 100 in the 200-seat lower house, and from at least one of the three independent deputies. The left-wing opposition is against the bill. It criticises the state for wanting to compensate churches more generously than other restitution claimants in the past. Similarly, the bill's opponents in the ODS say the cabinet has not sufficiently explained how the compensation sum was calculated. Like the opposition, they also say the bill, if passed, would unacceptably burden the next generations. Churches in the Czech Republic agreed on Wednesday that they still favour the government's bill as reasonable and feasible, unlike the enumerative restitution method some politicians suggested recently. ($1=16.295 crowns)
(Ceske Noviny)
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