Although security experts say the country isn't under any immediate terrorist threat, it should be doing more to streamline cooperation between its police and intelligence services. The country also needs to improve its collaboration with anti-terrorism security organizations abroad, said Bublan.

Bublan told journalists Aug. 22 that the main reason behind his decision to open an anti-terrorism center was his visit to Europol at The Hague last year.

"I discovered that information they get from the Czech Republic is very sporadic and from multiple sources," he said. "And that is not a good thing."

The center would employ between 30 and 50 officers drawn from the ranks of the Organized Crime Unit (ÚOOZ) and the Financial Police (FIPO). The representatives of the Czech Security Information Service (BIS) and the Office for Foreign Relations and Information (ÚZSI) would work closely with them.

According to David Kubalák, the cost of a center hasn't been set yet, but it will be mostly about re-organizing existing resources, so the cost shouldn't be high.

ÚOOZ officials said the trouble that their leader, Jan Kubice, finds himself in — he could be sacked for investigating corruption within the Social Democrats — would not affect the team's role in an antiterrorism center.

More details about the center are to be released in the following weeks.

Jana Hybášková, a deputy in the European Parliament who prepared a security audit this summer assessing the country's preparedness in the case of a terrorist attack, says establishing an anti-terrorism center is a move in the right direction but will only work if it's part of broader, systemic changes.

"I had to conclude in the audit that this country isn't sufficiently prepared," Hybášková said. "There's a lack of political will to make the security system more efficient."

Too much intelligence?

A number of politicians, however, have spoken out against Bublan's plan, with some worried that the new center would give intelligence services too many powers.

Such concerns are unfounded, said Jan Šubrt, spokesman for the BIS.

"The aim of the center would be to facilitate the cooperation between the different organs responsible for state security," he said. "That's why we welcome any step that will make our work more effective. The police need to be able to react as quickly as possible to any warnings we issue."

But some say the necessary mechanisms for gathering information needed to prevent terrorism are already in place.

"I have serious doubts about the usefulness of an anti-terrorism center here," said Ivan Langer, deputy chairman of the Civic Democrats (ODS), who would likely be the country's new interior minister in an ODS-led government. "What matters is the cooperation between the police and the intelligence services. I don't think we need a special center for that."

Džamila Sethlíková, deputy head of the Green Party, on the other hand, said there's no reason why Czechs shouldn't have an anti-terrorism center. "If it's well planned out, why not?" she said. "Other states have such centers, so why not us?"

Indeed, some have been calling for an anti-terrorism center for a long time, suggesting that Czechs are trying to ride on the coattails of other countries that are more prepared. Countries like France, Germany, Russia and the United States have had counter-terrorism divisions for years.

Social Democrat Miloš Titz, who was until the June election deputy chairman of Parliament's Defense and Security Committee, said he thinks Czechs underestimate the threat of terrorism here.