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The outgoing Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg is to visit Belarus on Thursday, it has been announced. According to the ministry, this will be the first time a Czech foreign minister has ever visited the ex-Soviet country. It is thought that Mr Schwarzenberg is visiting the country to discuss the EU’s Eastern Partnership scheme, which has been championed by the Czechs during their EU presidency, and which will be unveiled formally in Prague on May 7. Belarus is one of six former Soviet states to be involved in the programme, alongside Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, but it is not yet certain whether Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko will be invited to Prague to launch the scheme next month. The European Commission has recommended that a decision on Mr Lukashenko’s attendance of the event be postponed until the last minute.

The majority of Czechs believe that caretaker Prime Minister Jan Fischer will do a better job of running the country than outgoing government head Mirek Topolánek, suggests a poll conducted by the Median agency for Lidové noviny on Tuesday. Some 54 percent of respondents said that they believed the head of the Czech Statistical Office would lead the government more effectively than Mr Topolánek, whose government was toppled at the end of March. The majority of those polled said that it did not bother them that Mr Fischer had been a member of the Communist Party between 1980 and 1989. According to the survey, 63 percent of respondents said that they were unperturbed by Mr Fischer’s communist past, while 36 percent of respondents said that, for them, it was a problem. Jan Fischer is currently in negotiations to form a new cabinet before officially taking over on May 9.

After meeting Jan Fischer on Tuesday, outgoing Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek said that his replacement, Mr Fischer, was well aware of the task at hand. Mr Topolánek said that, in their meeting, the two men had discussed the time frame for forming a new government and the main aims that this new government should have. The meeting took place at around 15:00 CET in Prague’s Hrzánský Palace, which is Mr Fischer’s new office for the duration of his premiership. On Wednesday, Mr Fischer will meet the head of the opposition Social Democrats, Jiří Paroubek, to discuss the latter’s views on the formation of a new government.

Czech industrial output slumped by 23.4 percent on a 12-month basis in February, marking the fifth fall in a row, official data showed on Tuesday. The decline was mostly due to a drop in car production, which is usually the engine of the Czech economy, and which fell in February by 27.9 percent. Metals and machinery production also slumped, the Czech Statistical Office said. Industrial sales dropped by 20.6 percent year-on-year, while the value of new contracts was 24.7 percent lower. Month-on-month, Czech industrial output slid by 0.2 percent in February, statisticians said.