Several groups of entrepreneurs still have influence over the center of Prague, says representative Kristýna Drápalová – A2larm
The former assistant to the councilor for transport, who took charge of the cultivation of Prague’s public space in the last election period, encountered resistance from Prague businessmen again. In the autumn, it brought the news that hotelier Petr Bauer, who owns several businesses in the city center, was sentenced to a fine of almost 19 million crowns – for a bribe he tried to give to the Prague council for helping him “drop” the coalition and prevent promoting a new concept of front gardens. It was Drápalová who gave it to her colleagues. Bauer did not like that the concept ordered him to reduce the area of his gardens on Old Town Square, Malé náměstí and Karlova Street.
“The center of Prague is a specific space over which several groups of businessmen, together with some politicians and officials, have shared their influence over the past decades,” says the representative for Prague to Sob. “That system worked according to the customs of the nineties, some entrepreneurs lost the ability to distinguish between what is theirs and what is public. For twenty-five years, they were used to the fact that the space in front of their restaurant was theirs. Suddenly, someone started telling them that they had to make the garden smaller because it was encroaching on the space where people walk.”
According to the study we did, 70 percent of all billboards in Prague do not have a proper permit.
Drápalová used in the podcast that she had to use it again due to pressure from Prague businessmen. Even today, some gardens, the expansion of which exceeds the permitted standard, are still in place. “Almost every evicted tenant will attack you in court, so you have to count on the fact that it will take several years before you manage to get the owner of the too-large garden to reduce it,” says Drápalová, adding that in some cases the court has already made a final decision that the city’s progress was in order. “However, even in these cases, the owners leave the gardens in operation until the executor forces them to modify them.” According to the representatives, the fine of 19 million crowns for Bauer is, on the one hand, a high amount, but at the same time, it probably won’t deter some others from doing unfair business. “Maybe this will screw up the price of a bribe on the market,” thinks Drápalová.
Prague, the city of billboards
Thanks to the negotiations of the representatives and her colleagues with the companies that will find advertising space opposite the Nuselské bridge, it was possible to remove probably the most famous tarpaulin with advertising and the adjacent LED screen. However, a large number of advertising spaces remain in Prague, many of which are in place illegally. “The advertisements at the Nuselské bridge were unique cases because they were visible. This procedure cannot be repeated with all illegal areas in Prague. According to the study we did, 70 percent of all billboards in Prague do not have a proper permit. In addition, Prague’s income from them is only 38 million per year. But you can’t make a case out of every problematic billboard,” explains Drápalová.
The measure, according to which there is a recent ban on placing advertising tarpaulins in a heritage-protected area in Prague, was then challenged by the operators of these advertising areas at the Office for the Protection of Economic Competition. “A year and a quarter after the submission of the initiative, the office really started to deal with it. Personally, I think it is absurd to say that the measure distorts the market, however, the company says that we are advantageously billboards compared to tarpaulins. At the same time, we also regulate them, only with a different regulation,” says the representative. According to her, the decision of the office will be valuable. “It will be a matter of deciding whether the tarpaulins have priority and therefore the right to spread advertising is more protected in the Czech legal system, or the right of the local government to say that citizens do not have to look at them.”
The former columnist and employee of the Prague Institute for Development and Planning also describes in the podcast how officials built a database of Prague billboards during the last election period. “That’s because until now Prague has not monitored whether they have a valid building permit. Even building authorities usually do not keep such records. Many of them have documents that lead to this somewhere in paper boxes in the basement, that’s what the administration looks like. To then adapt something to standards that I think are self-evident is a bit of science fiction.”
Listen to the entire podcast, in which it is also discussed why you can still buy a Brad Pitt caricature on Charles Bridge, and whether the reconstruction of the Prague Market or the Main Railway Station will take into account different groups of the population, their purchasing power and needs.