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The Czech president Vaclav Klaus has signed an amendment which grants foreigners better access to education in the Czech Republic. According to the amendment, not only EU citizens, but all those with residency permits for longer than 90 days will be able to attend Czech schools under the same conditions as Czech students. Children of foreigners illegally living in the Czech Republic will also be able to attend elementary schools. The previous law gave only EU citizens or people with permanent residency the right to study at Czech schools, but human rights organizations said that this denied children their right to an education, and breached the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights.

When the Czech Republic enters the Schengen zone on December 21, it will bring in an era of passport-free travel for Czechs abroad. But not everyone is looking forward to the change. Entry to the Schengen zone could spell trouble for the sizeable number of Americans who have, up until now, been living and working in Prague without a visa.

The future of Kosovo has been exercising minds throughout Europe in recent weeks, and now the UN deadline for a settlement on the Serbian province has expired, talks have acquired a new urgency. Leaders of the so-called Visegrad Four group - the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary – discussed Kosovo this weekend ahead of a key European Union summit on the problem.

Prefabricated blocks of flats from the housing estates inhabited largely by Czech Romanies may be renovated, using the funds from an EU operational programme, according to the government council for the Romany community. The project managed by the Local Development Ministry should take place between 2007 and 2013 in five localities with over 20,000 residents.

In related news, a new agency was set up to battle social exclusion and to improve housing conditions of Romanies. As of January 2008, the agency will conduct pilot projects in 12 Czech ghettos. It will aim to establish cooperation between authorities, NGOs and residents of the localities. There are currently over 300 ghettos in the country, mostly inhabited by Romanies, with as many as 80,000 people living in them.

The Czech government approved an updated convergence programme for euro adoption, but still no target date in sight; The Czech National Bank board raised its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.5 percent and Czechs are making more money - the average wage in the Czech Republic is up by 7.6% year-on-year.

Czech regions are to receive 150 billion crowns, or 8.3 billion US dollars, from the EU, the CTK news agency reported on Wednesday. The European Commission approved seven operational programmes for the Czech Republic through which the funds will be distributed among the regions within next six years. The contracts between the EU and the individual regions should be concluded on December 13. The regional operation programmes were approved after several months of reviews, and although the deadline for objections formally expires on Friday, no changes are expected.

In contrast to what he called a ‘strong’ Civic Democratic government, Mr Topolanek said that he had been ‘too weak’ to prevent the adoption of the EU reform treaty, which grants the European Union some powers which previously belonged to its individual member states. Mr Topolanek said that he knew he had not acted in accordance with the Civic Democrats’ 2006 manifesto when he voted for the reforms. But, he added, vetoing the treaty would have isolated the Czech Republic in Europe, which he was not prepared to do. Deputy PM for European Affairs Alexander Vondra insisted that the Czech delegation had succeeded in watering down the final version of the treaty, which it went on to approve. He added that the EU treaty, in its final form, was acceptable and in harmony with the policies of the Civic Democrats.

In just a few weeks the Czech Republic will lift its border controls as the country joins the Schengen area. However, that doesn’t mean Czechs will be allowed to cross the borders wherever they want to. Sumava National Park, stretching along the German and Austrian borders, has decided to exclude part of the German frontier from the border-free zone. Regional politicians and tourists are very much against the idea, arguing that the former Iron Curtain is now being transformed into a new “green curtain”. R.F. talked to Radovan Holub, the National

The consumption of marihuana in the Czech Republic along with other illicit substances has dropped, according to the annual report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction published on Thursday. Despite this, young Czech adults of up to 24 years of age consume more marihuana than their peers anywhere else in Europe.

The Czech Republic has the most bureaucratic tax system in the European Union, suggests a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Bank. Of one hundred and seventy-eight states surveyed around the world, the Czech Republic ranked 113th in terms of tax system efficiency and 168th in terms of administrative burden – making it the worst in the EU. Czech firms spend 930 hours a year on tasks related to taxation, the study found.