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President Vaclav Klaus has asked the acting leader of the Social Democrats, Stanislav Gross, to begin talks on forming a new government. Mr Gross is hoping to build a coalition with the same two centre-right parties who were in government with the Social Democrats under his predecessor Vladimir Spidla; he resigned last weekend in the wake of poor results in elections to the European Parliament.

However, Mr Gross must find at least one extra vote to secure a majority in the Chamber of Deputies before the president will appoint him prime minister. The previous coalition had a majority of one in the 200-seat lower house, but one MP from the smallest party, the Freedom Union, has joined the opposition and another has announced he is going to follow suit.

In the meantime, a former member of the opposition Civic Democrats has allied himself with the Freedom Union.

Newspaper reports on Friday suggested that Mr Gross, who is 34, would try to win the support of MPs from the opposition benches in order to gain a majority.

Speaking to journalists on Friday, President Klaus said the new government should offer more than just the replacement of a few faces. He said the Czech people were expecting them to deliver change.

After the Czech Republic were beaten 1:0 by Greece in the semi-finals of football's European Championships on Thursday, Czech striker Milan Baros said finishing as top scorer would be no consolation for being knocked out of the competition. Baros looks set to receive the Golden Boot award after scoring five goals at Euro 2004.

Meanwhile, Czech manager Karel Bruckner said his players had gained credit around Europe for their style of play. Incidentally, in a strange twist of fate, the Czechs are due to play Greece again in a friendly in Prague next month.

Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla officially tenders his resignation as prime minister and leader of the Social Democrats at the cabinet session on Wednesday evening, which will also see the entire cabinet resign. Speaking to journalists, Mr Spidla said he would send his written resignation to President Vaclav Klaus on Thursday morning. Mr Spidla decided to step down from both posts after he narrowly survived a vote of no confidence in him as party leader just weeks after his party's dramatic defeat by the Eurosceptic opposition in the European Parliament elections earlier this month. Although he said he would stay active on the Czech political scene, he refused to comment on speculation that he could be the next speaker of parliament or succeed European Commissioner Pavel Telicka in Brussels in the autumn.

President Klaus on Thursday will begin talks with the leaders of the Social Democratic Party (the biggest party in parliament), the Christian Democratic Party (the junior ruling coalition partner), and the senior opposition right-of-centre Civic Democrats. After a round of talks, Mr Klaus will most likely name acting Social Democrat leader Stanislav Gross prime minister-designate. A day before the talks, President Vaclav Klaus reiterated he would not appoint a government backed by the Communists. In an interview for the Czech daily Mlada Fronta Dnes he also said he believed it would not be possible to form a government from the three ruling coalition parties due to weak support in parliament. President Klaus is the former leader of the opposition Civic Democrats, who won most seats to the European Parliament and are pushing for early national parliamentary elections.