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Czech President Vaclav Klaus and members of the government representing the country abroad held a meeting on Thursday to form a common position on the European Union ahead of the EU summit in June. Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said Prague expects the summit to produce a road map for the creation of a new document on the EU's future role. This document should ideally not be called a constitution, not create the post of EU foreign minister, leave out the human rights charter, and should give individual member states the right to re-vote on issues decided in Brussels that threaten their sovereignty.

Before the summit, Mr Topolanek also hopes to discuss the Czech position with his outgoing British counterpart Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel whose country currently holds the EU presidency.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and his Italian counterpart Romano Prodi on Monday publicly disagreed on how to begin to streamline the European Union. Mr Prodi, on a one day visit to Prague, called for the EU draft treaty rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 to serve as the starting point for fresh institutional reform moves. The former EU Commission president said that what occurred in 2004 was a serious point of departure, noting that the treaty had been ratified by 18 EU members. The government of Mirek Topolanek, however, does not support the EU constitution in its current form and says the ratification process is ended as far as the Czech Republic is concerned.

The clash comes just over a month before EU leaders meet in Brussels on June 21-22 seeking agreement on progress for Europe's stalled constitution. Germany made the re-launch of the constitution a priority for its current EU presidency.

Mirek Topolanek's Civic Democrat-led government has been one of the biggest critics of the proposed European Constitution treaty. The government claims that smaller countries like the Czech Republic will lose decision-making power under the treaty's new voting system. Since Prague's chances of pushing through an amendment are minimal, the Czech cabinet has now come up with a proposal that would give member states the right to veto certain decisions made in Brussels.

In Business News this week: the EC says it expects the Czech Republic's GDP growth to fall below 5 percent this year and also worsens the outlook for the country's public finance gap; March was the best month ever for the export of goods; unemployment falls below 7 percent; interesting figures have been released regarding the sectors in which Czechs work; and the agriculture minister wants to speed up the sale of state land to give Czech farmers an advantage before an EU accession transition period ends.

The Czech Republic, Poland and the Netherlands want to give national parliaments a veto over proposed European Union legislation under a treaty to replace the stalled EU constitution. The German daily Handelsblatt said the three states had asked EU president Germany to strengthen a provision in the defunct charter whereby one-third of national legislatures may send bills back to the European Commission for redrafting. Handelsblatt said the trio want to turn the "yellow card" into a "red card", meaning a minority of national parliaments would be able to block any new EU law. The proposal is one of several that will be aired when senior officials of the 27-nation bloc meet in Berlin next Tuesday for the first joint session to thrash out the outlines of a new slimmed-down treaty reforming EU institutions.

It has been three years this week since the Czech Republic joined the European Union. In terms of satisfaction with EU membership, latest opinion polls suggest that Czechs are more sceptical than the average EU citizen. But on the political front, two thirds of the population say they trust legislators in Brussels more than in the Czech Republic. I spoke to David Kral from the European policy think tank Europeum to find out how the country has fared in the last three years:

In Business News: Czech firms are to pay out their highest dividends ever, but most of the money could flow out of the country; over 30 international firms have opened development or distribution centres in the Czech Republic in the last year; Skype is opening a programming centre in Prague's revitalised Karlin district; inspectors find numerous shortcomings at Czech internet retailers; and the Czech economy is one of the most 'energy demanding' in the EU.

The Czech economy is four times more demanding in terms of energy consumption than the European Union average. According to a new European Commission report, the Czech Republic was the fifth worst country in this respect in 2004. The Czech economy required 852 kilogrammes of oil to produce gross domestic product of 1,000 euros; the average in the EU as a whole was 200 kilogrammes.

Czech negotiators for the preparation of a new EU constitutional treaty have met with representatives of the German EU presidency and presented the Czech position on the treaty, Czech MEP Jan Zahradil has said. Mr Zahradil revealed that he and other representatives had presented a proposition under which EU member countries would not have to take part in some EU projects. He said that the Czech government also wanted to look into whether some powers were more effectively dealt with on the EU level or on the national level. Germany holds the EU presidency until June and wants to push forward EU institutional reform that slowed after France and the Netherlands rejected the EU draft constitution in referenda two years ago.

The Czech government appeared to soften its approach to a new European constitution this week - provided the EU doesn't call it that. This week the cabinet - dominated by the staunchly anti-federalist Civic Democrats - approved a fresh negotiating strategy, which appears to be a departure from its previously uncompromising stance. But as Rob Cameron reports, just don't mention the 'C' word.