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The newly-elected Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, went to the EU summit in Brussels with two priorities uppermost in mind: defending the country’s anti-migrant stance and gaining more allies in the block. However neither his arguments nor a financial pledge of 220 million euros in aid of the migrant crisis helped him to avert the threat of legal action from Brussels.

Sometime labelled as anti-European Union, new Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš has chosen Brussels and a crunch European Council meeting as his first foreign trip. And Mr. Babiš says he wants his government to play a much more active role in EU affairs.

The newly-appointed Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who is representing the Czech Republic at a two-day EU summit in Brussels, has reaffirmed the country’s negative stance to mandatory migrant quotas, highlighting its strong engagement in helping to resolve the situation in the countries of migrant origin. The Czech prime minister met with the heads of government of the Visegrad Four states and with EC President Jean Claude Junker to discuss the ECs decision to sue the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary over their unwillingness to accept migrants.

The Visegrad Four announced at the summit that they will contribute 35 million euros to strengthen Libya’s borders and alleviate the plight of migrants in the country.

Just days ahead of a scheduled EU summit on migration, Prague has announced the launch of a Visegrad group project to strengthen Libyan border protection and improve the plight of refugees in the country. The Czech Republic, which now faces a lawsuit over its failure to take in refugees, is pushing the view that the crisis needs to be resolved outside of Europe.

The European Commission has announced it is suing the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary in the bloc’s top court for their refusal to take in asylum seekers in line with the Commission’s mandatory re-distribution mechanism. Prague says it will not change its stand and warns that a court case will only further undermine public trust in EU institutions.

Prague’s sole European agency, an offshoot of the Galileo navigation system, has brought 1 billion crowns worth of benefits to the Czech capital during its short stay. But major questions are still circling the economic viability of the whole project.

Prague and the rest of Central Europe lost out in the latest share out of European agencies across the continent. It has created a lot of anger and resentment in some capitals that the smaller and newer states were again pushed around by the bigger and older ones. The Czechs admit their bid for the European Banking Authority was always a big challenge and they were probably outsiders. But they also admit misgivings about how the share out evolved.

Czech President Miloš Zeman has criticized the European Union, saying it lacked strong leaders and that it used a double-standard when it came to Crimea. He made the statement in an interview with the Russian news agency TASS - days before he is to begin an official visit to Russia with a major Czech business delegation.

During the visit, Mr Zeman will meet with President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and also former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

In the interview, President Zeman compared Crimea to Kosovo, whose autonomy, he said, was guaranteed by the United Nations. Crimea's referendum on independence is not internationally recognized and move is seen as an illegal annexation for which Russia still suffers sanctions. Mr Zeman told TASS he was the only European politician who spoke about the issue in such a manner; the president has opposed the sanctions in the past, maintaining they did not work and should be lifted.

Twenty-three EU member states, including the Czech Republic, have signed up to a European pact on defence cooperation called Pesco (Permanent Structured Cooperation). The deal, to be formally launched in December, is likely to cover everything from troops and arms to new defence projects, with varying input from different countries.

One of the important issues discussed at the two-day EU summit in Brussels was proposed changes in the mechanism of EU decision-making, which would allow some EU members to push ahead with integration faster. For the Czech Republic, which is still outside the Eurozone, this could present a serious problem.