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President Vaclav Klaus is meeting with Prime Minister Petr Nečas and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg on Thursday for foreign policy consultations ahead of Friday’s EU summit in Brussels. The summit is to debate reopening the Lisbon treaty to include a new financial aid mechanism for ailing member states. The Czech government was to have debated the country’s stand to the proposed aid mechanism at its regular session on Wednesday but postponed its decision in view of consultations with the president. An amendment to the Lisbon Treaty would not only have to be approved by the Czech Parliament but signed by President Vaclav Klaus.

The lower house of Parliament on Thursday voted in favour of a bill that would allow foreigners to buy farm land in the Czech Republic. The bill will now be reviewed by the house’s committees before MPs take a final vote on it. The Czech Republic negotiated a ban on the sale of land to foreign nationals ahead of the country’s EU entry in 2004. The exemption will expire in May 2011. The bill was criticized by the Czech Agrarian Chamber which said it was another manifestation of the country’s defensive agriculture policy. Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek noted however that thousands of hectares of farm land are already owned by foreigners who can bypass the law by founding a company in the Czech Republic.

Czech diplomat Jana Hybášková is being eyed for the post of EU ambassador to Iraq, the Czech news website respekt.cz reported on Wednesday. Without revealing its source, the website said Ms Hybášková is to be approved for the posting by the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, next week.

Jana Hybášková, 55, was the Czech ambassador to Kuwait and Qatar before becoming an MEP in 2004. During her term in Brussels, she headed the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Israel.

The Czech Republic has been placed in 16th place out of the European Union’s 27 for its use of new technology and innovation. That ranking below the EU average puts the country in the bracket of modest users of innovation. Two of the EU’s intake of new members from central and eastern Europe, Slovenia and Estonia scored better than the Czech Republic. The best ranked countries were Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany.

The two junior parties in the Czech government coalition have stepped up the pressure on Minister of Defence Alexandr Vondra to explain an inflated contract when he was previously in government. The contract relates to audiovisual aids contracted for the Czech EU presidency in 2009 which Mr. Vondra was largely responsible for as deputy prime minister for European Affairs. Mr. Vondra has blamed a junior official for the contract placed without the required tender and which according to some estimates cost 10 times what it should have. Representatives of the TOP 09 party and Public Affairs called for the police to be brought in to investigate on Tuesday. Mr. Vondra has said he will step down if he is found responsible for any wrongdoing.

Czech MEP Jan Zahradil of the Civic Democrats has confirmed his intention to run for the post of chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament. Mr. Zahradil said that if elected he would try to attract more deputies to the group and improve its communication strategy. At present he is drumming up support for his candidacy. A new chairman is to be elected on March 8 to replace Michal Kaminski who is leaving the post in connection with his departure from the Polish Law and Justice Party.

Germany’s Federal Statistical Office recently released an analysis which says that the Czech population is the least threatened by poverty of all the EU member states. According to data from 2008, some 8.6 percent of Czechs, or over 900,000 people, face poverty risk. But critics say these numbers have little relevance, and poverty is looming over many more Czechs. Jan Richter has the details.

How do Czechs’ foreign language skills compare to those of other European nations? At first glance, good – squarely within the European average. But in a small country with an above average need for foreign language skills, good may not be good enough, and in some cases there are more jobs than there are linguistically qualified job-seekers to take them.

Czech cinemas earned record ticket earnings and the best audience figures in almost two decades in 2010 according to figures released by the Union of Film Distributors on Tuesday. Box office earnings stood at 1,5 billion crowns over the year. That is an advance of around 246 million crowns on 2009. The number of cinema goers climbed to 13.53 million from 12.47 million a year earlier. The 2010 figure for visits is the best since 1993

The Czech Republic received a record net gain from the European Union in 2010 according to the Ministry of Finance. Last year the country got 47.3 billion crowns more from the 27-national block than it paid in. That is the highest figure since the Czech Republic joined the EU in 2004. The Finance Ministry said payments to Brussels rose slightly to 37.1 billion over the year while the country significant upped its performance in pulling in EU cash. In 2009 the net surplus from the EU stood at 42.3 billion crowns.