🇨🇿 Czechia

Czechia's demographic picture is the 'quiet middle' trap: not peripheral enough for dramatic brain drain headlines, but close enough to Germany and Austria to haemorrhage its most capable young workers to higher wages. Net migration has been positive due to Ukrainian refugees post-2022 — but this is dependency cope, not demographic strength, as many are women and children, not AI-complementary workers. Youth unemployment rising from 6.4% to 10.6% signals that the buffer of EU mobility is masking deteriorating domestic conditions; when your 25-year-olds can simply move to Dresden, 'low' unemployment is a measurement artifact.

Czechia has no comprehensive national AI strategy — the Fiala government focuses on fiscal consolidation and EU rule compliance rather than structural transformation. Industrial policy exists in fragments around EV transition and battery supply chains, but no serious workforce retraining apparatus for the 150,000+ automotive workers whose jobs face software-defined obsolescence. The Czech National AI Strategy (2024) reads like a Brussels translation exercise rather than a survival plan.