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The Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland is in Prague for talks with Czech top officials. During talks with Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek Mr. Jagland praised the Czech Republic as a staunch defender of human rights in Europe, stressing that the protection of human rights and rule of law were essential for security in Europe. Mr. Jagland, who is also due to meet with Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, is expected to bring up the question of equal access to education for the Romany minority, something the Council of Europe has repeatedly criticized Prague for.

The European Commission has lifted a two-year- freeze banning the Czech Republic from accessing funds from the EU’s Operational Program for Enterprise and Innovation. The move was made in connection with a number of dubious public tenders and it left the Czech Republic financing all ensuing projects from state coffers.

ANO leader Andrej Babiš has created a political flurry with his suggestion that Czechs should be given a chance to vote on whether to dump the crown for the single currency euro. The question could, he says, be twinned with parliamentary elections. But the suggestion has been given a mixed reception and faces many hurdled.

The Czech Republic has already rejected an EU plan that would see it take in a quota of over 500 refugees in the next two years. Now Brussels has announced fresh proposals under which Prague would have to accept an additional 1,300 Syrian and Eritrean asylum seekers who are already in the EU. But if member states approve the plan, what impact will the refugees have on the Czech Republic? That’s a question I put to Magda Faltová, who heads the Association for Integration and Migration, an NGO.

Minister of Industry and Trade Jan Mládek came into his current post just over 15 months ago with a mission to change the country’s trade and investment policy. He criticized the former centre-right administration for damaging Czech business prospects in China and allowing foreign investment in the Czech Republic to diminish to a dribble. We took a chance to ask him about the successes and failures so far, firstly about whether the goal of boosting exports outside Western Europe had been achieved.

This Sunday, President Milos Zeman has called a meeting at Lany Chateau with the country’s prime minister, finance minister and central bank governor to discuss plans for the speedier adoption of the single European currency. Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka revealed the news in an interview for commercial radio station Rádio Impuls on Tuesday. At the same time, he stressed, adoption of the euro was not something which would happen during this political cycle.

The Czech Republic on Monday gave its full backing to EU plans to establish a naval force to combat people-smuggling in the Mediterranean where more than 1,800 migrants have died since the beginning of the year. However the Czech authorities remain opposed to the idea of adopting national quotas for housing migrants, which they say would create unforeseen problems.

The Czech Republic is not alone in opposing the European Commission’s plan for compulsory quotas for accepting asylum seekers, according to the country’s foreign minister, Lubomír Zaorálek. Speaking after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday, Mr. Zaorálek said several states had already made clear that such quotas would cause them problems. The Czech Republic would be required to take in over 500 refugees permanently and to process the asylum requests of around 9,000 others under the plan, which follows disasters in which large numbers of people have died at sea trying to reach Italy from North Africa.

Czech foreign minister Lubomír Zaorálek has said that the European Union should prolong current sanctions against Russia in a month’s time. The comments were made in an interview with the Russian internet news server Gazeta.ru. Zaorálek said that there is evidence that Moscow continues to give heavy weapons to the separatists around Donbas and in the rest of Eastern Ukraine. It is also clear that thousands of Russian troops are planted not just on the Russian side of the border but also across it in Ukraine, he added. Russia denies direct involvement in the fighting between separatists and the government in Kiev. Minister Zaorálek’s comments contrast with the suggestion by president Miloš Zeman a week ago that the conflict in Eastern Ukraine appeared sporadic and that sanctions against Russia might be dropped by the end of the year if Moscow was shown to be abiding by the Minsk ceasefire conditions.

The Czech Republic has strongly rejected freshly announced European Union plans for a quota system for accepting refugees. The EU wants the country to take in over 500 refugees permanently and to process the asylum requests of thousands more. But the Prague government insists any such scheme should be voluntary.