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The Czech Republic’s deputy prime minister for European Affairs, Alexandr Vondra, says speculation that the country could lose the right to hold the presidency of the European Union in the first half of next year is unfounded. Some European newspapers have suggested that given the current financial crisis and other issues facing the EU, France could extend its current presidency for at least six more months. However, Mr Vondra said EU rules precluded any such development. There has also been some suggestion that France could play a leading role in an informal Eurozone grouping, from which the Czech Republic, which has not adopted the common European currency, would be excluded. Mr Vondra said creating such a grouping would represent an unwise step which could divide the EU rather than unite it.

In the wake of demonstrations by the far-right in the town of Litvínov, an umbrella organisation for Romany associations says Romanies should form self-defence groups. In a statement, Romani Alliance criticised the police for not intervening last Saturday when between three and four hundred neo-Nazis marched on a part of Litvínov with a big Romany population. Police say they reacted in an adequate fashion. Romani Alliance said Romanies should not rely on a failed state apparatus but should prepare themselves to deal with any attack. Meanwhile, TV Nova reported that the far-right activists had threatened to demonstrate again if the local town hall did not deal with the so-called Romany question by the end of the month.

The author Arnošt Lustig received the Franz Kafka Prize on Thursday. The literary award is co-sponsored by the Franz Kafka Society and the Prague Town Hall and includes a financial reward of USD 10,000. Previous recipients include Ivan Klíma, Harold Pinter and Philip Roth. Mr Lustig, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor, has written novels, short stories, plays and screenplays. As a young man he worked at Radio Prague.

On the day of the vote, the governing coalition scored an important victory in the lower house, pushing through the basic parameters for the 2009 state budget into a second reading. A repeat vote took place on Wednesday after three rebels of the ruling Civic Democratic Party blocked the budget late Tuesday on the grounds that it was based on a projected 4.8 GDP growth when, in the light of the global crisis, the Central Bank had revised its forecast down to 3.6 percent. After some legal uncertainty regarding the fate of the budget, a second vote took place on Wednesday.