Industry Min. Jozef Síkela (STAN) laid it on the line on the OVM debate show on Sun. and said that the national budget for next yearb doesn’t include funding for dealing with extreme volatility in energy prices but that measures will be put in place if they become neces- sary. This means that businesses can at best count on higher energy rates next year due to planned changes to the subsidy system. A worse-case scenario is a sudden sharp rise in global energy prices or shortages that lead to drawn-out government talks about how to ad- dress the renewed crisis. Companies employing tens of thousands of people in the CR took the initiative last month to ask PM Petr Fiala in an open letter to support same-sex marriage, but they’re less vo- cal when it comes to energy policy. No full-page ads talk about how high energy prices threaten the CR as one of the most-industrialized countries in Europe. Chair Christian Kullmann of Evonik chemicals of Germany complained in Handelsblatt last week that his country is threatened by deindustrialization but that a lot of people are act- ing as though it doesn’t matter or wouldn’t be so bad anyway.

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