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The capital of Czech Republic is Prague, its area measures 78,900 square kilometres, the population is made up of 10,203,000 inhabitants, the gross domestic product is 75.7 billion Euros. The inflation is 2.9%, its unemployment rate is 8.4%, the deficit is –4.3%, and its National debt is 37.8%. Czech Republic was born on the 1st January 1993, after the solving of Czechoslovakia, approved in 1992 by a Constitutional law dealing with the estintion of the Czech and Slovakian Federal Republic. According to its present constitution Czech Republic has a parliamentary form of Government, the Parliament has a bicameral stucture made up of an Assembly of Deputies, including 200 members elected by a proportional system every 4 years, and a Senate, including 81 members, elected every 6 years, by a double-turn majority system. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Head of the State and he is responsible in front of the Assembly of Deputies; the President of Republic is elected by both the Chambers together, and he is considered one of the two Chiefs of the Executive within the Czech political system. The present President of Republic is Vaclav Klaus, elected in 2003, after two mandates carried out by Vaclav Havel, a famous Czech novelist and one of the protagonists of the 1989 Velvet Revolution. The Prime Minister in office is Jiri Paroubek, appointed in 2005, after some private scandals involved the former Premier Stanislav Gross. The last legislative elections has been held in June 2002 and they saw the victory of a centre-leftist coalition including the Social-Democratic Party, two smaller parties, the Christian-Democratic Union and the Party for Czechoslovakian People, and the Freedom Union. Czech Republic is a new adhesion country as it joined the European Union in May 2004. The edhesion referendum took place in June 2003 and the 55% of the voting people partecipated, with a wide percentage of “Yes”(77%). After the enlargement, Czech Republic owns 24 seats out of 732 within the European Parliament. The first European elections in Czech Republic were held on 11th and 12th June 2004, the percentage of voters has been one of the lowest in Europe (28%). The elections has been affected by the domestic affairs and they saw a fail for all the Government parties, so that the former Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla had to resign. The Social-Democratics, the Catholic Centrists, and the Liberals had a particularly low result, whereas the main opposition party, the “Democratic Civic Party” turned out to be the winners, gaining 9 seats out of the 24 belonging to Czech Republic. Its deputies joined the “European Popular Party”. The result of the Communist Party was better than anyone expected too, as they get 6 deputies that joined the European Unitary Left. Within the present European Commission, leaded by Barroso, the Czach Commissary is Vladimir Spidla, commissary for the employment, the social affairs and the equal opportunities.
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