Morning Briefing │ Friday, April 12th, 2024

* ENERGY:

Imports of Russian oil from the Druzhba pipeline to Czechia rose slightly last year, Czech Television reports. The Russian share of total oil imports to Czechia was 58 percent, an increase of about two percentage points year-on-year. The rest was oil from the German IKL pipeline, which connects to the Italian TAL pipeline.

* POLITICS:

Czech President Petr Pavel met with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in Vilnius, Lithuania on Thursday, where the two heads of state are attending the Three Seas Summit. The Ukrainian president thanked Mr. Pavel for the Czech initiative to purchase artillery shells for Ukraine from outside the EU.

* WEATHER:

Friday should continue to be relatively warm and sunny with highs of up to 19 degrees Celsius. No rain is expected.

* HEALTH:

In addition to whooping cough, the Czech Republic has seen a year-on-year increase in several other infections in the first quarter of this year, including measles, legionellosis, scabies and diphtheria, and monkeypox has also returned, according to information from the National Institute of Public Health (SZU).

* ECONOMY:

The Czech Republic sees its unemployment rate drop below four percent after two months. As of the end of March, the unemployment rate had fallen to 3.9 percent, a significant decrease influenced by warmer weather. At the end of March, there were 288,623 individuals without employment, 7,484 fewer than the previous month