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Two members of the incoming caretaker government of Prime Minister Jan Fischer have come under attack even before they have taken up office. The new Minister of Transport, Gustáv Slamečka, turns out to have Slovak citizenship. The main opposition party, the Social Democrats, says this could pose security problems. Meanwhile the new Minister of Culture Václav Riedlbauch has come under criticism for his active past in the pre-Velvet Revolution Communist Party. According to Thursday’s Lidové noviny, Riedlbauch tried to stop musicians heeding students’ pleas they take part in a protests against the Communist regime in November 1989 which eventually caused it to fall. He was an artistic director at the National Theatre at the time.

Znojmo beer has been given protected status by the European Commission. The Commission announced in Brussels on Thursday that the beer had been given protected geographical indication status, meaning that nowhere from outside the area can use the name. The application for the special status was made several years ago and continued when the Brno-based brewery Starobrno was bought by multinational brewing giant Heineken. But it is not yet clear if the brewer will relaunch the mark. Around 850 products have so far been awarded geographical protection across Europe.

The Czech Senate has voted to ratify the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, two and a half months after it was approved by the lower house. The motion was passed when 54 out of 79 senators present raised their hands for Lisbon ratification in Wednesday afternoon’s vote. It was effectively decided by members of the Civic Democratic Party, which had previously been opposed to Lisbon: twelve of the party’s senators voted in favour of its ratification.

On the sidelines of an EU-Canada summit on Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper discussed the issue of Czech asylum seekers in his country with his Czech counterpart, Mirek Topolánek. The latter told reporters that Mr Harper had said the Czech Republic was beginning to breach one of the conditions under which Ottawa had granted Czechs visa free status, namely that the number of asylum applicants was getting too high. The Canadian leader said if there was no improvement in this respect, his country would have to react. In the first three months of this year over 650 Czech citizens, many of them from the country’s Romany minority, have applied for asylum in Canada. Ottawa dropped visa requirements for Czechs in 2007, a decade after introducing them following a wave of asylum seekers.