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The Czech Republic’s biggest food company has just been eaten up by a Norwegian based rival. The deal still has to be approved by competition offices but this does not look like a major hurdle.

The Czech government is debating the future of the Paskov mine, one of the last deep coal mines in the country, after its owner OKD announced its possible closure at the end of 2016. The mine is one of the biggest employers in the Moravian-Silesian region and its closure would put 1,800 employees and almost as many more doing business with the mine out of work.

Toy sellers expect pre-Christmas sales to hit record numbers this year, reports news website iDnes. The Association for Toy and Play sales suggests sales could be the highest since the economic crisis of 2008.

The Czech headline unemployment rate in November remained at the level of 5.9 percent, according to the figures released by the country’s Labour Office on Tuesday, unchanged from October. This follows a continuous decline over the previous three months. The latest figure still shows the jobless total at its lowest level since March 2009.

The draft bill on the 2016 state budget is due to go into its third and final reading in the lower house on Wednesday. While the government is confident it has the votes to push it through, opposition parties are preparing to do battle, saying that the draft bill is in violation of the law.

The Czech Republic is currently experiencing something of a boom in garlic production. Over the past five years, the area of garlic fields under cultivation has multiplied nearly ten times.

The Czech government has approved a bill on consumer loans aimed at protecting borrowers. The amendment significantly limits sanctions for late payments and is seen as a means of combatting extortionate interest rates.

The popular Czech beverage maker Kofola went public on Wednesday, December 2nd, with trading launching on the Prague Stock Exchange. Within a week’s time, the trading of Kofola shares will begin also in Warsaw. With interest rates at record lows and equity funds reporting surplus cash, investor interest on the regulated market is expected to be high.

The number of reported crimes in the Czech Republic involving the theft of metals dropped by over 50 percent between March and November compared to the same period last year. According to the Ministry for the Environment, police recorded just over 3,400 such crimes so far this year, compared with over 8,000 during the same months last year.

If the Paris climate change summit delivers on ambitions goals and targets, then the main burden will fall on energy companies to deliver on them. But is the Czech Republic’s biggest power company, ČEZ, placed to square up to that challenge?