Democracy Digest: Paris Probes Babis while Spirit of Thatcher Lives On in Czechia

The Czech government hopes to have a windfall profit tax ready to roll out at the start of 2023, a senior official suggested this week. A bill to introduce the levy on energy and banking companies that have made extraordinary profits thanks to surging energy prices and higher interest rates should make its way through the legislative process by the end of the year, Marketa Pekarova Adamova, parliamentary speaker and head of the small conservative Top09 party, said on TV. Suggestions that such a tax might be introduced have been buffeting the share price of state-controlled energy group CEZ for some weeks. The centre-right coalition is keen to defend the plan, which runs counter to their conservative instincts, but is needed if they're to lower the budget deficit as promised. "The situation is very extraordinary," Adamova said. "[Former British prime minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced a similar tax and she was also a right-wing politician."

Hungarian Foreign Minister Petr Szijjarto meets his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on July 21, 2022. Facebook/Peter Szijjarto Hungary receives extra gas from Russia; judicial deficiencies; e-bike paramedics

Gazprom began delivery of 700 million cubic meters (cm) of extra natural gas to Hungary, State Secretary Tamas Menczer announced on Facebook last weekend. This follows Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto's controversial trip to Moscow in July to request the gas over and above the long-term gas agreement signed last year for 4.5 billion cubic cm/y, or roughly half of Hungary's demand. With Western gas markets drying up, the Hungarian government became highly concerned about the winter and rushed to secure more gas from Moscow, despite the EU's consensus on reducing gas dependence on Russia....