Government downscales plans for civil servants to learn French

According to Hospodarske Noviny, the Czech government has lowered the target it set for over 500 civil servants to learn French fluently by 2009. The Czech Republic takes over the EU presidency from France at the beginning of 2009, and hundreds of civil servants had been sent to Prague's French Institute to gain a command of the language as part of the preparations. But now, the government has lowered its expectations, asking only for a basic knowledge of French from its employees. Time constraints have been blamed for move. The Czech Minister for European Affairs, Alexandr Vondra has been quoted as saying that he himself does not speak French, and finds it unlikely that he would learn it well enough to help him within a one-year time frame.