The commission agreed that the churches should receive the property that they undoubtedly owned as of February 25, 1948, when the communists seized power in the country, and the property that was to be returned to them after WWII under the laws of democratic Czechoslovakia. "The whole political spectrum from the [opposition] Communists (KSCM) Next Czech Chamber session may be held in late August ...
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Czechs mark Holocaust Remembrance Day ... to [senior ruling] Civic Democrats (ODS)] said we would like to compensate and return the church property that the churches owned or should have owned as of February 25, 1948," Benda said after the commission meeting. The government bill on state-church settlement reckons with similar principles. However, the leftist opposition as well as ODS deputy Vlastimil Tlusty, who criticises the government bill, said it was not certain how the government had calculated the church property that was to be compensated. The Chamber of Deputies established the commission to prepare a proposal for the state-church property settlement in mid-June after it turned out that the coalition cabinet of the ODS, the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) and the Greens (SZ) was not able to push through the respective bill in parliament. Apart from the opposition, three ODS deputies headed by Tlusty refused to vote for the bill. Under the bill submitted by the government, churches are to be returned one-third of their former property, confiscated by the Communists, and to receive 83 billion crowns in compensation for the rest. The compensation is to be gradually paid in the following 60 years.
Along with the interests, the sum would climb up to 270 billion crowns. (USD1=14.483 crowns)
(Ceske Noviny)
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