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Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala has criticized Poland and Hungary for blocking talks on migration at the EU summit in Brussels. The Czech prime minister said Warsaw and Budapest were damaging Czech interests by doing so.

Within  the solidarity principle, Czechia managed to push through the condition that countries which host large numbers of Ukrainian refugees should get financial support, and by their adamant position on migration, Poland and Hungary are effectively blocking the funds that would help us deal with the influx of Ukrainian refugees," the Czech prime minister said.

Mr. Fiala said that critics of the EU migration deal in Prague who say the Czech government should cooperate with Poland and Hungary in this matter "really do not know what they are talking about".

The solidarity principle, which is at the centre of the migration agreement, states that countries refusing to take in migrants could pay 20,000 euros ($21,400) per person instead.

The agreement was approved with a qualified majority vote earlier this month.  Poland and Hungary were outvoted in the process. Their aim at the summit has been to challenge the legal validity of that decision.

Czech Post is closing 300 branches around the country as of June 30 for financial reasons. The state owned company has also been laying off employees in order to mitigate its losses, which more than doubled year-on-year to 1.7 billion crowns in 2022. The management says the move is inevitable due to falling demand for traditional postal services. After the closures Czech Post will be left with 2,900 outlets.

The Chamber of Deputies has nodded to a bill that would legalize marriage for same sex couples. The bill was approved in its first reading, after four failed attempts in the past, and remains highly controversial. MPs were involved in heated debates primarily as to whether the union of same-sex couples should be called a "marriage" or something entirely different. The issue is dividing parties across the political spectrum. The draft will now be submitted to the members of the Constitutional Law Committee for consideration. It will have four months to review the draft instead of the usual two.

Before leaving for the European Council summit in Brussels on Thursday, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said at a press conference that ANO leader Andrej Babiš's calls to veto the EU's migration rules were nothing more than demagoguery and scaremongering. He reiterated that the proposal does not contain mandatory refugee relocation quotas, but rather corresponds to the long-term position of the Czech government on the issue of migration, including what Andrej Babiš had himself advocated for when he was prime minister.

Leaders of EU countries are meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to discuss topics including migration and how to limit the number of refugees coming to Europe. The draft migration and asylum rules were agreed upon by EU member states in Luxembourg at the beginning of June.