Jan Šinágl angažovaný občan, nezávislý publicista

The MFA Czech Republic needs a total reform and purge! Career diplomats are the type of people who cover their backs for the sake of profit, and the interests of the country come second. The higher the position of responsibility, the less freedom the person has to solve the problem or challenge. He needs ten times more knowledge and expertise than is actually needed. Honour the exceptions! JŠ

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Jan Čapek produced an audit, the contents of which were unpleasant for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He found that the office was not transparently selecting people for highly desirable positions in embassies. A swift sacking followed.

According to the immediate account of Čapek's boss, Hybášková (the personnel chief) was told by Čapek's boss (as heard on the recording) that if journalists learned that the selections were not transparent, "it would be such a headline." Also that the audit report should be classified so that journalists can't get to it through the information law.

Did an article disappear from the front page of Seznam.cz unusually quickly? One of the diplomat's first posts about her experience was no longer found in the discussion of the article. I'm adding more relevant information:

Prime Minister Fiala and the government have been talking about an energy crisis in the country since the beginning of 2022. There was and is no energy crisis. All the talk about electricity was to cover up the huge speculation on the commodity derivatives exchange.

Today, there is clear data on electricity production in the country in recent years, on exports and on trading, but not in electricity, but in commodity derivatives. The electricity price increase was a scam and a scam instigated by the Czech Government and their "friends" who smelled a huge opportunity after the collapse of Bohemia Energy. But trading, trading in commodity derivatives is more like Russian roulette than the job of an exchange engineer in a block watch.

Information on open positions worth up to 557 billion crowns. That is, about how CEZ's trading got out of control and it was necessary to quickly find money somewhere for possible damages. Also, remember those wannabe experts who spent all of 2022 and 23 telling everyone that electricity had to be sold through the stock exchange? Oops, I guess they're liars or misinformers, since CEZ actually sells the vast majority of its generation in the country, directly to customers or distributors.

The increase in electricity prices for customers in the Czech Republic was blamed on the fall of Bohemia Energy and the war in Ukraine. It is a tragedy that the Czech Government and the supervisory authorities allowed this to happen. In addition, they have lied to us for a long time and systematically about the energy crisis and how they are fighting (hard) what they have caused.

Technically, from the point of view of the engineers, there was no reason for the price of electricity in the Czech Republic. The termination of service by Bohemia Energy was an opportunity for other traders to easily gain new customers, perhaps with some price premium. What happened, however, was a battle of "Grab what you can, the cash register is open".

AVAST branded by the Brussels Morning newspaper (on my PC), as "fraudulent"? System hypersensitivity from the "bad" days? It's the facts that matter. JŠ

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Belgium (Brussels Morning newspaper), MEPs have voiced concern that the “slow progress” of an investigation into the so-called Qatargate scandal. They say that, seven months on from the affair “some of the grandiose promises for ethics and transparency reforms seem to be falling short.” The  European parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola, warned colleagues that the institution and European democracy at large are “under attack.” She also pledged an internal investigation and reforms to ensure transparency. There have been two “important” developments in Parliament this week – a vote on changes to Parliament’s own rules and another on a Commission proposal for an EU ethics body.

Since the Qatargate scandal came to light, some MEPs have called for root and branch reform to, in their words, “fix the Parliament’s rotten culture of revolving doors, opaque practices, and lack of oversight.” In efforts to improve transparency at the Parliament, the Left grouping of MEPs in the assembly has persistently called for a ban on side jobs for MEPs. They state that MEPs “already receive a generous allowance. When MEPs have side jobs, their interests become inextricably linked to corporations or associations they work for, to the detriment of their constituents.”

Some members are said to earn up to €8,000 per month on top of their allowance.