Czech

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the east. The Czech Republic has a hilly landscape of 78,871 square kilometers (30,452 sq mi) with a predominantly temperate continental and oceanic climate.

The Bohemian Duchy was founded at the end of the 9th century under Great Moravia. It was officially recognized as an imperial state by the Holy Roman Empire in 1002 and became a kingdom in 1198. After the Battle of Mohacs in 1526, the entire Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy. The Protestant Bohemian uprising led to the Thirty Years' War. After the Battle of White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their power. After the collapse of the Holy Empire in 1806, the lands of the Crown became part of the Austrian Empire.

In the 19th century, Czech lands became more industrialized, and in 1918 most of them became part of the First Czechoslovak Republic following the collapse of Austria-Hungary after the First World War. Czechoslovakia was the only country in Central and Eastern Europe that remained a parliamentary democracy throughout the interwar period. After the Munich Agreement of 1938, Nazi Germany systematically took control of the Czech lands. Czechoslovakia was rebuilt in 1945 and became an Eastern Bloc communist state after a coup d'état in 1948. Attempts to liberalize government and the economy were thwarted by the Soviet invasion of the country during the Prague Spring in 1968. In November In 1989, the Velvet Revolution ended the communist rule in the country, and on January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia was dissolved and its constituent states became the independent states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The Czech Republic is a unitary parliamentary republic and a developed country with a developed social market economy with high incomes. It is a welfare state with a European social model, universal health care and free university education. It is ranked 12th on the United Nations Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index and 24th on the World Bank's Human Capital Index, ahead of the United States. It is ranked 9th among the safest and most peaceful countries and 31st in terms of democratic governance. The Czech Republic is a member of NATO, EU, OECD, OSCE and CE.