PM to travel to Russia in May

Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas will travel to Russia in late May to meet with his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. The prime minister, his spokesman said, would be accompanied by a delegation of Czech business leaders and representatives. Mr Medvedev, then-president of Russia, met Mr Nečas in Prague in December 2011. Topics they discussed included the planned expansion of the Temelín nuclear power plant, south Bohemia. One of the bidders in the giant Temelín tender, launched by the plant’s operator, the state-owned ČEZ energy utility, is a Russian-Czech consortium led by Russia’s Rosatom.

During Medvedev’s Prague visit in late 2011, contracts worth 2.15 billion euros were signed, including a contract for the construction of a railway route in the Urals and a contract with the Alvel company for supplies of nuclear fuel to the Czech Republic. Czech-Russian trade turnover has increased in the past years. According to estimates from September 2012, it exceeded six billion US dollars last year for the first time.