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Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka began a two-day visit to France on Thursday, his first to Paris since taking office. Meeting with President Francois Hollande, Mr Sobotka weighed in on the continuing crisis in Ukraine, calling on Russia to recall troops on Ukraine’s border. But it was largely to rebuild ties with France – as well as to connect with the French Socialist Party ahead of European elections – that were reasons for the trip.

The Czech Republic is facing proceedings at the EU’s Court of Justice over restricting the political rights of EU nationals residing in the country. They can run in local and European elections but are not allowed to join Czech political parties or form their own. This goes against EU law, and although lawmakers had years to adapt Czech legislation, efforts to end the discrimination have only recently got underway.

A recent incident at a home for children with behavioral problems where two teenagers brutally attacked their teacher with a screwdriver has sparked a debate on the criminal liability of minors with the education minister proposing tougher punishment for juvenile perpetrators of violent crimes.

The Czech media sector has often won international praise in the past for its freedom and independence. But some in the country are questioning whether that is still the case following the acquisitions by billionaire businessman, ANO leader, and current minister of finance, Andrej Babiš. The biggest centre-right opposition party in parliament, TOP 09, is seeking to make media ownership an issue in the upcoming European elections.

Plans are afoot to turn a former railroad freight station in the Prague district of Žižkov into a new cultural hub. The culture minister signed a memorandum on Tuesday with Czech Railways, the local town hall and a developer under which the largest preserved functionalist industrial building in the city could one day house the National Film Archive and other institutions. But does turning the listed freight station into a cultural centre make sense? That’s a question I put to architecture critic Adam Gebrian.

The Czech Supreme Court has devised new guidelines for calculating settlements for bodily harm. The methodology, which comes in a reaction to rather vague provisions of the new Civil Code, should help unify court rulings on compensation for temporary and permanent injuries and similar issues. The new rules also raise the maximum amount of compensation for grave social impairment to 20 million crowns.

Czech banking institutions, most of whom still observe the unpopular practice of charging fees for managing loan and mortgage accounts, can breathe a sigh of relief. In a closely watched case the Constitutional Court on Tuesday ruled that the practice of charging such fees is not illegal, dashing the hopes of tens of thousands of people who have signed up to class actions to try and get their money back.

A Czech man suffering from amnesia, found in a snowdrift in Oslo last December, has begun regaining fragments of memory after speaking with his family over the phone. It has come to light that the man, who has gone under the name of John Smith since his rescue, worked for the Interior Ministry.

Prague Mayor Tomáš Hudeček and architect Roman Koucký of the Prague Institute of Planning and Development outlined on Thursday principles for a new metropolitan or zoning plan for Prague to be passed in 2017. Central to the proposal, is the understanding that additional sprawl at the edge of the city needs to be curbed, while undeveloped areas within the capital need to be built up, to create a living city that is functional and robust.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been in Prague on Thursday for talks with the Czech prime minister and other senior officials. Naturally Russian aggression towards Ukraine has been on the agenda, but the alliance’s secretary general has also been trying to persuade Prague to boost its military spending.