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The fight against people smugglers and steps to curb the flow of illegal migrants from North Africa to Europe should be the key priorities at the EU’s informal summit in Malta, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka told journalists on the eve of the meeting. The prime minister said the Czech Republic fully supports closer cooperation with North African states on ways to stem the flow of refugees and curb the operations of people smugglers in the Mediterranean. He said he did not expect the issue of migrant quotas to be a subject of debate but noted that the Czech Republic’s negative stance to quotas remained unchanged. EU leaders are also expected to discuss Brexit and EU-US relations under the Trump administration.

The Czech Republic failed to effectively take advantage of opportunities to pump European funds last year, according to the Minister for Regional Development Karla Šlechtová. The minister described last year’s results as poor, adding that part of the problem was with fund management bodies and also the fact that firms and individuals preferred to turn to national funds rather than EU cash because the procedures were simpler. Last year agreements covering around 10 billion crowns were signed with 14.2 percent of the maximum total for the 2014-2020 of 648 billion crowns now claimed. This year, the minister said around five times more EU cash, or around 53 billion crowns, should be claimed.

Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec, who attended an informal meeting of European interior and justice ministers in Malta on Thursday, repeated the Czech government’s firm opposition to EU mandatory refugee quotas. Taking the opposite stand, EU Commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said he hoped the ministers would finally agree on a fair distribution of migrants. He told the AFP news agency it was time to interpret the principle of solidarity in the same way. The Czech government remains opposed to mandatory refugee quotas on the grounds that such a system would not work.

Last year the Czech Republic received some CZK 79.6 billion more from the European Union than it paid into the coffers of the 27-member bloc, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Czech Ministry of Finance. It was the third highest net gain for the Czech Republic since it joined the EU in 2004. The country has obtained more from the bloc than it has paid in for each of the last 12 years.

A Czech minister has, to some extent, broken ranks over how the European Union should negotiate with Britain over Brexit. Interior minister Milan Chovanec has suggested that when it comes to the rights of Czechs living in Britain, Prague should go it alone and launch its own talks with London regardless of what the other 26 EU countries are doing.

Czech member of the European Parliament Pavel Telička has been elected one of the parliament’s deputy presidents. He will join 14 other MEPs chosen to become deputy presidents for the newly elected People’s Party president, Italian Antonio Tajani. Telička is a member of the ANO party and was the chief negotiator ahead of the Czech admission to the European Union in 2004.

The Czech Republic is suing the European Commission over the new denaturated alcohol guidelines that are to come into effect as of August 2017. The government is thus hoping to prevent the new guidelines coming into force. The EC regulation was approved in order to reduce fraud and administrative burdens caused by too many national denaturing processes, of which there are currently over 150. The EC claims the new unified formula introduced is irreversible. However according to Czech experts the new “Euro” formula is not only easily reversible, creating space for fraud, but is three to four times as expensive as the current denaturing compositions used.

A new survey conducted by the European Parliament reveals that Czechs have more negative views about this institution than the EU average. Almost three-quarters of Czech respondents said that they did not believe their voices were being heard by the EU, and only 17 percent of Czechs have a favourable view of the European Parliament. Jan Kovář is chief analyst at the European Values think-tank. I asked him what was behind such low numbers.

The Czech government has decided to sue the European Commission over the new denatured alcohol guidelines that are to come into effect as of August 2017. Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said the government’s decision was a last-ditch effort to prevent their introduction, since the new rules and a single “Euro” formula would create considerable space for fraud and tax-evasion.

The Czech government has decided to sue the European Commission over the new denaturated alcohol guidelines that are to come into effect as of August 2017. Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said the government’s decision was a last-ditch effort to prevent their introduction. He said the new guidelines create space for tax-evasion and need to be revised. According to the new EU guidelines denaturated alcohol would be exempt from excise duties.