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Václav Klaus is a hot favourite in Friday’s presidential election. Backed by the ruling Civic Democrats in both houses of Parliament, he will only need 20 votes from other parties’ electors to win a second term in office. But his apparent advantage over challenger Jan Švejnar – experience in politics, originality of thought, and unwavering support for what he refers to as ‘Czech national interests’ – might also prove to be his greatest weakness.

Jan Švejnar is taking on the popular incumbent Václav Klaus in this Friday’s election to the largely symbolic post of Czech president. The challenger left Czechoslovakia with his family at the age of 17, after the Soviet invasion of 1968. Following a short period in Switzerland, the Švejnars moved to the United States, where Mr Švejnar – now 55 – has since spent most of his life.

A report outlining Roma minority problems in the EU, adopted by the European Parliament on Thursday, highlights the case of a pig farm built on the site of a wartime concentration camp for Romanies near the community of Lety, central Bohemia. Members of the European Parliament are calling on the Czech authorities to abolish the farm, and create a memorial in honour of the camp’s victims.

Czech President Václav Klaus is notorious for his outspoken views on climate change. He calls evidence of global warming “bogus” and ambitious environmentalism "a threat to freedom and economic growth". But now Mr. Klaus is no longer just up against “ambitious environmentalists”. He is opposing the far-reaching measures that the EU has put in place to cut carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decade.

Several members of the European Parliament in Brussels have criticized the US plan to position parts of its missile defence system in the Czech Republic and Poland. Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit said on Wednesday that the plan to site a radar base in the Czech Republic and ten intercepting rockets in Poland would have a serious impact on the security of the entire European Union. The missile defence system is bad, said Mr Cohn-Bendit, and will have counter-productive consequences. Jan Marinus Wiersma, the deputy chairman of the EP’s socialist fraction, said that the missile shield does not fit the European security strategy.

In related news, the Czech Republic was criticized by the European Parliament for failing to address the issue of a pig farm constructed on the site of a wartime Roma concentration camp. Czech authorities say they don’t have the funds needed to remove the farm and erect a memorial to the Roma victims of the camp.

Czech prostitutes are hired to work in British brothels, CNN reported on Wednesday. A CNN reporter posing as a British brothel owner interested in hiring prostitutes for work in Britain contacted the management of several Czech brothels in and around Teplice, North Bohemia. They offered the undercover reporter two girls for several thousand pounds and a percentage of their earnings in Britain. One of the Czech brothel owners indicated that he had previously supplied a girl to work in a brothel in Manchester.

President Václav Klaus has called the EU climate package a ‘tragedy’. In an interview for the German financial daily Handelsblatt on Thursday, Mr Klaus said that the set of regulations adopted by the European Union in an effort to tackle climate change is a ‘tragic mistake’. The President hopes that the Czech and other EU countries’ governments will stand up against these ‘bureaucratic ideas’. Mr Klaus also challenged the idea of thawing icebergs, saying that it only happens in films by Al Gore. The former US vice-president, according to Václav Klaus, represents a threat to freedom.

The Czech Republic will make a profit out of the EU’s new strategy to cut emissions, reported Lidové noviny on Thursday. The European Commission set targets on Wednesday for each of the 27 EU member states, obliging them to raise to a set percentage the use of renewable energies in their overall energy mix by 2020. Prague has been ordered to practically double its reliance upon renewable energy sources. But, Lidové noviny reports, the Czech Republic will be one of six EU states to actually benefit financially from the plan. Analysts predict that the scheme should raise Czech GDP by 0.51% annually. The Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade has responded by saying that it is impossible to tell whether such estimates will prove to be founded.

In 2007, the Czech Republic received some 49.1 billion CZK (2.46 billion USD) from the European Union. Over the same period, it paid 32.1 billion crowns into the EU coffers. On Thursday, the Ministry of Finance revealed the figures, stressing that the Czech Republic had received 17 billion crowns more from the EU than it had paid in. According to a ministry spokesperson, this was the largest amount the country had received from Brussels since joining the EU in 2004. The Czech Republic received large sums in particular last year from the EU’s structural and cohesion funds.

On Wednesday, the European Commission made public its planned reforms in its fight against climate change. The proposed measures are aimed to help the EU slash greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020, as well as to increase reliance on green energy. Under the measures the Czech Republic, for example, will have to more than double energy production from renewable sources.