(CIANEWS) - On June 8, 2022, Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) gave a speech at the German Eastern Business Association annual convention in Berlin. In his speech, he mentioned the five current priorities the government would focus on during its presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2022, namely managing the refugee crisis and post-war recovery in Ukraine, energy security within the RePowerEU package on getting rid of Europe’s dependency on Russian energy supplies, strengthening European defence capacities, strategic resilience of the European economy, and the resilience of democratic institutions. In addition, Fiala said that Russia was using hybrid forms of war to fight other countries, including the Czech Republic and Germany. The Czech government is also committed to increasing investments in defence from the current 1.35% of GDP to 2% of GDP in 2024.