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The Czech coalition and opposition parties have reached a compromise on civil service reform, paving the way for Parliament to adopt the long-overdue legislation. But the deal has come under fire from some Social Democrats as well as anti-corruption advocates, who say the bill has been eviscerated and will likely fall short of improving the country’s public administration.

Czechs boast a long and rich brewing tradition which they have often shared with the rest of the world. Czech-built breweries now exist in countries such as Georgia, Ukraine, South Africa and Vietnam. But one Czech firm has ventured to a country few would associate with a love of lager: North Korea. The Hradec Králové-based ZVU POTEZ last year built a micro-brewery in North Korea’s special economic zone of Rason, and now hopes the deal will lead to more opportunities in the deeply repressive country. I spoke to the firm’s commercial director Martin

The Czech Republic has secured another major foreign investment with the South Korean car parts maker Hyundai Mobis signing a deal to build a factory outside Ostrava. It’s the third large South Korean investment project in the Czech Republic – but new EU rules on incentives could make it harder for the country to attract big foreign investors in the future.

The selection of a Czech candidate for the European Commission has been the subject of a major contest on the Czech political scene this summer. But the eventual nomination of Regional Development Minister Věra Jourová has been described as a win-win situation for all parties involved, as well as for the Czech Republic, whose candidate has a good chance of being put in charge of one of her preferred portfolios.

Several Chinese pharmaceutical firms have recently sent their envoys to Prague to test the ground for potential cooperation. One opportunity eyed by the Chinese firms is making the Czech Republic the base of their operations in Europe, eventually expanding their business to other EU member states.

Both production and sales of cars in the Czech Republic have seen a strong increase this year. Some 94,000 new cars were registered in the country in the first six months of 2014, more than 16 percent higher than in the same period last year. Meanwhile, Czech-based car producers have pushed up output by over 8 percent. The continuing recovery of the Czech economy, along with higher household spending have been driving the rising sales, according to Vojtěch Opleštil from the Prague branch of the PricewaterhouseCoopers consultancy.

A Brno-based firm believes that a simple device they have designed could conserve major amounts of drinking water. The company, aptly named Watersavers, produces a faucet aerator which reduces water consumption by up to 80 percent while creating the illusion of a full water flow. After years of development and marketing, the firm has gained a foothold on Czech and some European markets, and is now looking to expand around the globe. I sat down with Watersavers’ business development manager Martin Procházka, and first asked him how the device

Software piracy levels in the Czech Republic decreased slightly in 2013, according to a freshly released study by BSA, an anti-piracy group representing several global software firms. The study says that 34 percent of computer programmes in the country were used without licences last year, down from 35 percent in 2012. BSA’s methods of calculating the rate have been disputed, and the group has also been criticized for paying informants to report the use of illegal software in their companies. But BSA says the controversial programme has borne fruit.

The Czech Republic is looking to expand cooperation with China following a recent reset of relations with that country. Two months after a ground-breaking trip to Beijing by the Czech foreign minister, the minister of industry and trade, Jan Mládek, has just visited China in an effort to boost trade, investment and tourism links between the two nations.

E-books have been slow to take off in the Czech Republic with taxes, a local penchant for piracy, and caution from some of the traditional print publishers some of the factors in its slow roll-out. But the optimists are still sticking to the script that e-books can elbow themselves a much greater share of the market.