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The Czech Chamber of Deputies passed a constitutional bill on Wednesday under which early elections will be held on October 9-10 at the latest. The bill also ordains that the current caretaker government will be dissolved by mid-October at the latest. The legislation, which was supported by 172 of the 189 deputies present, now goes to the Senate for final approval. As it is a constitutional law, it cannot be vetoed by Czech President Václav Klaus. The bill had the support of the two biggest parties in the lower house, the Civic Democrats and Social Democrats and, as these two parties also have a clear majority in the Senate, it is expected that the bill will be passed there too.

Ministers from across the EU met with their counterparts from Latin America in Prague on Wednesday for an EU-Rio Group summit. Top of the agenda was the recent swine flu outbreak and the steps individual countries have taken to counter the spread of the virus. Mexico is currently the head of the Rio Group, though delegates from more than 40 countries attended the summit. According to Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout, steps that countries could take to help each other following the outbreak were discussed alongside security measures each country had chosen to implement. Swine flu has been confirmed in more than 30 countries though deaths from the virus have been registered in only four – Mexico, the United States, Canada and Costa Rica.

Czech Minorities and Human Rights Minister Michael Kocáb wants to create a foundation to buy out a pig farm located on the site of a former Nazi concentration camp where hundreds of Czech Romanies died during WWII. Romany rights groups have long sought the removal of the large-scale pig farm from the site, and the Czech government has come under repeated criticism from the European Parliament for failing to move the facility elsewhere. Previous governments pledged to abolish the pig farm but said they did not have the funds to do so. An estimated 600-700 million crowns (30-35 million USD) is required to relocate the farm and transform Lety into a memorial of the Romany Holocaust. Speaking at a commemorative service at the site on Wednesday, Human Rights Minister Michael Kocáb said he would ask Czech firms such as CEZ to contribute to a fund which would pay for the pig farm’s removal.

Czech MEP Jan Zahradíl has said that his party, the centre-right Civic Democrats, will not be talked out of leaving the European People’s Party, a grouping of centre-right parties from across the continent at the European Parliament in Brussels. Nor would leader of the British Conservatives, David Cameron, be swayed to chance his mind, Mr Zahradíl told the Czech press. On Tuesday, British paper The Guardian suggested that Mr Cameron was under pressure to reverse his decision to leave the grouping after June’s European elections, both from those within his own party, and centre-right politicians in Europe such as Angela Merkel. The British daily also suggested that the Czech Civic Democrats harboured doubts about leaving the EPP – which is the single strongest parliamentary group in the European Parliament. On Wednesday, Mr Zahradíl said that his party’s departure from the EPP ‘could not be stopped’, and that Mr Cameron would be ‘disgraced’ should he change his mind.