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Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas has asked the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy for the 27-member block to put more pressure on Canada over the matter of visas for Czech citizens. Canada enforced visas for Czech nationals last year in reaction to a stream of predominantly Romany asylum seekers from the Czech Republic and has refused to reverse its decision. The European Commission has expressed solidarity with the Czech Republic and briefly considered the idea of introducing visas for Canadian diplomats in response, but never took the step. The Czech prime minister urged greater solidarity saying that the lack of action suggested the Czech Republic was viewed as a second-class member of the alliance.

Czech leader Petr Nečas is no stranger to EU summits, but Thursday’s which got underway in Brussels is his first as prime minister. Ahead of the summit, the PM made clear he would defend Czech interests and press two key issues: the need for automatic sanctions for the breach of EU budgetary regulations (which the summit aims to address) and to raise the pressure over Canadian visas which were reinstated for Czechs last year.

The Czech Republic, Germany and Poland will ask jointly for EU funds to help cope with the damage caused by the August floods, Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas and Saxony's Prime Minister Stanislaw Tillich said on Tuesday. EU aid money can be drawn if the damage is over 21 billion crowns. The damage estimate in the Czech lands falls short of that amount but a joint request by the three neighbouring states would fulfil the criteria. According to the latest data, the total flood damage in northern Bohemia in August crossed 10 billion crowns.

Slovakia's refusal to contribute to the EU bailout package for Greece cannot be interpreted as a lack of solidarity but rather as a call for greater responsibility, representatives of the Visegrad group states concluded on Tuesday. Parliamentary committees for European Affairs of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia debated the issue at a meeting in Prague and fully accepted Slovakia’s stand that providing the aid would sanction the actions that led to the crisis, including providing misleading information about Greece’s financial circumstances. Slovakia, the poorest and newest member of the 16-nation euro zone, refused to contribute 700 million euro to the 80 billion euro EU rescue package, which was supplemented by30 billion euro from the International Monetary Fund.

Jan Bureš is chief economist at Poštovní spořitelna, which is part of the banking group ČSOB. Aged 31, he is one of the most visible Czech economists of his generation, frequently appearing on TV and penning a column for the magazine Respekt. Earlier on Monday I spoke with Jan Bureš at ČSOB’s Prague HQ. My first question: almost exactly two years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered an international economic crisis, what state is the Czech economy in today?

Along with other EU nations, the Czech Republic has agreed with the overhaul of the EU’s financial supervision structure, Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek told reporters after Tuesday’s meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels. The Czech Republic, which opposed the reform, agreed to back the plan after other critics such as the UK, withdrew their objections. The Czech finance minister said that Prague gave in so as not to disrupt the unity in the Council of the European Union, and to gain a better negotiating position on other issues. The European Union will establish three regulatory institutions as part of the approved measure that will supervise the banking, insurance and financial market sectors.

President Václav Klaus has waded into the debate over cuts at the Foreign Ministry. Addressing Czech ambassadors on Wednesday, the President questioned the need for some European embassies. He said that he did not see the need for having embassies in many smaller EU states saying that such countries were not really foreign territory as such. With this in mind, he cautioned against proceeding headlong with cuts. So far the Foreign Ministry has announced the closure of embassies in the Congo, Venezuela, Kenya, Yemen and Costa Rica as part of the government’s overall cost cutting drive.

Leaders of the junior coalition party TOP 09 said Tuesday that the coordination of EU affairs policy cannot be entrusted to a specially appointed state secretary because the coalition agreement allots that responsibility to the head of the government. Prime Minister Petr Nečas has planned to establish the post of state secretary for the EU soon, saying the depth of Czech-EU relations necessitates the post. In the view of TOP 09 chairman and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg however, the prime minister is responsible for the coordination of the country’s European policy, while the Foreign Ministry is responsible for its implementation. Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek, who has clashed with the PM on other matter in recent weeks, also said that the powers of the prime minister could not be performed by an appointed official. Mr Nečas called the remarks a sign of pre-election uneasiness.

Prime Minister Petr Nečas says the Czech Republic will be applying for money from the EU Solidarity Fund to cover damages from recent floods in the regions of Liberec and Ústí nad Labem. The government will be discussing a joint application with Poland and the German state of Saxony, both of which were also hard hit by the early-August floods. The prime minister says that damages have so far reached 6.5 billion crowns, which does not entitle the country to automatic funding from the EU. The state has already earmarked 80 million crowns for immediate aid and a further 665 million for repairs to infrastructure.

A Eurobarometer poll indicates that Czechs’ trust in European institutions is slipping. A similar trend is discernable across the EU and is being attributed to the impact of the global crisis. The number of Czechs who profess to trust EU institutions is now at 50 percent, down by nine percent as compared to last year. Despite the fall, the Czechs still trust EU institutions more than the EU average which is now down to a mere 42 percent.