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The one-time electoral alliance of the Pirates and Mayors parties have the right to propose Czechia’s next European Commissioner under the deal created when they entered government with Together, Prime Minister Petr Fiala of the Civic Democrats reiterated through a spokesperson on Sunday. Together consists of the Civic Democrats, the Christian Democrats and TOP 09.

Mr. Fiala said it would still be up to the governing coalition whether to approve any candidate.

Alexander Vondra, who is Together’s leader for European Parliament elections in June, also said on Sunday that it was the Pirates and Mayors who would nominate a European Commissioner to replace Czechia’s Věra Jourová, when her term ends.

The anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy party say they aim to appeal to supporters of government leaders the Civic Democrats in June’s European Parliament elections, Novinky.cz reported on Sunday.

Party leader Tomio Okamura told the news site that the grouping planned to target dissatisfied supporters of the Civic Democrats.

To that end they have placed one-time MEP Petr Mach, a euro-sceptic, at the head of the party’s candidates list, instead of Ivan David, who is currently Freedom and Direct Democracy’s sole MEP. The grouping are planning to run in an alliance with the extra-parliamentary Tricolour in the Euro elections.

Christians in Czechia are celebrating Easter Sunday, one of the most significant days in their faith’s calendar. With regard to folk traditions, many Czechs eat a meat-based lunch on the Feast of the Resurrection, breaking a long symbolic fast, while eggs are painted for the following day.

Easter Monday is more closely associated with customs linked to the arrival of spring. These include males lightly “whipping” females with switches braided from willow branches and adorned with ribbons.

The Czech painter Věra Nováková has died at the age of 96. Nováková, who was also a sculptor and book illustrator, is considered one of the most original Czech artists of the 20th century.

Born in 1928, she was expelled from art school in Prague a year after the Communist takeover. She married another hugely respected artist, Pavel Brázda, in 1950 and the pair worked mainly outside official structures for the next four decades. Her first major exhibition took place after the Velvet Revolution.

“I went through almost the entire 20th century and experienced two totalitarian systems – Hitler’s and Stalin’s. Four years after the end of the war, I was expelled from the Academy of Fine Arts because I did not fit for building a socialist paradise, which was true,” Věra Nováková said in 2022.