Andrej Babiš

Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borissov will participate today in a working meeting with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and the Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic - Andrey Babiš, of Latvia - Arturs Krishyannis Karinsch, of Slovenia - Yanez Jansha and of Croatia - Andrey Plenkovic, the government press service announced.

Faced with the prospect of a "complete catastrophe in the hospitals," the Czech Republic has announced a significantly tighter lockdown in an attempt to bring Covid-19 cases under control.

Two opposition coalitions, the centre-right Spolu and liberal Pirates/Stan, have been formed in recent months. Polls suggest each could win 20-25 per cent of the vote, around the same level to which ANO's support has declined amid the government's erratic handing of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Predictably, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was most unhappy with the ruling. He complained that the court is interfering with the political process because campaigning has effectively already started for the elections on October 8-9.

The deference shown to the Chinese officials by the party leader of the Czech Communists during a video conference last September is shocking.

By way of contrast, Chinese pressure to stop Jaroslav Kubera visiting Taiwan took a more sinister turn when the Senate president keeled over from a heart attack. When his successor, Milos Vystrcil, embarked on the trip anyway in September, Beijing hoped to similarly scare Prague with threats of retaliation.

This is an unprecedented move by Zeman. First of all, operational security demands a very high level of 'need to know' and compartmentalisation within counter-intelligence work. The identities of surveillance targets, the sources and methods used to monitor and expose them, and even their apparent missions are treated as extremely confidential.

Leaders of the four are due to discuss the issue at a meeting on June 11. But experts and officials are sceptical they will bridge their differences.

"We don't expect to see a strong unified front as we did during the migrant crisis," said Vit Havelka, an analyst at the Prague-based Europeum think tank.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday has proposed the creation of a "safe corridor" that will allow travel between countries which have successfully contained their coronavirus outbreaks in a bid to revive tourism, which came grinding to a halt in March following widespread lockdowns and travel bans.

The leaders of the seven countries that are considered to have had the most success in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic held a teleconference on Friday to share their experiences.