page_title: Czech Republic
section_title: Velvet Revolution and the European Union
hierarchical_section_title: Czech Republic / History / Velvet Revolution and the European Union
caption_attribution_description: English: Václav Havel
context_page_description: The Czech Republic, also known by its short-form name, Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast and Slovakia to the southeast. The Czech Republic has hilly landscape that covers an area of 78,866 square kilometers with a mostly temperate continental climate and oceanic climate. It is a unitary parliamentary republic, with 10.7 million inhabitants. Its capital and largest city is Prague, with 1.3 million residents; other major cities include Brno, Ostrava, Olomouc and Plzeň.
  The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as an Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire, and became the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198, reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Prague was the imperial seat in periods between the 14th and 17th century. The Bohemian Reformation of the 15th century led to the Hussite Wars, which resulted in a period of confessional pluralism and relative religious tolerance.
context_section_description: In November 1989, Czechoslovakia returned to a liberal democracy through the peaceful "Velvet Revolution" (led by Václav Havel and his Civic Forum). However, Slovak national aspirations strengthened (see Hyphen War) and on 1 January 1993, the country peacefully split into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Both countries went through economic reforms and privatisations, with the intention of creating a market economy. This process was largely successful; in 2006 the Czech Republic was recognized by the World Bank as a "developed country", and in 2009 the Human Development Index ranked it as a nation of "Very High Human Development".
  From 1991, the Czech Republic, originally as part of Czechoslovakia and since 1993 in its own right, has been a member of the Visegrád Group and from 1995, the OECD. The Czech Republic joined NATO on 12 March 1999 and the European Union on 1 May 2004. On 21 December 2007 the Czech Republic joined the Schengen Area. Until 2017, either the Social Democrats (under Miloš Zeman, Vladimír Špidla, Stanislav Gross, Jiří Paroubek and Bohuslav Sobotka), or liberal-conservatives (under Václav Klaus, Mirek Topolánek and Petr Nečas) led the government of the Czech Republic.
caption: Václav Havel, first President of the Czech Republic
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