(PRAGUE) - Czech education minister Dana Kuchtova announced Tuesday she will resign from her post due to political pressure over her ministry's botched multi-billion euro application to pump EU funds.

"Over recent times there have been many utterances or attacks on me personally from the part of different interest groups and from political parties also, unfortunately, from coalition parties," the top Green Party member said in a news conference following a meeting of the party leadership.

"Following these attacks, I do not have enough room to complete the preparation of these (EU) programmes," she added.

Kuchtova admitted her share of the blame for the poor preparations in drawing EU funds, adding though that her predecessors should bear a greater responsibility.

Her resignation is expected to officially take effect next week.

The former high-profile anti-nuclear activist has been target of mounting criticism for the last two weeks ever since it was revealed that Czech universities and research centres could lose out on up to 68 billion koruna (2.46 billion euros, 3.47 billion dollars) in EU funds because of flaws in the way ministry officials drew up the bid.

EU officials fuelled fears when they rejected a first draft and expressed strong doubts over whether the Czech application could be approved in time, Czech media reported.

Czech premier Mirek Topolanek said Tuesday that he did not believe Kuchtova's departure would spark a wider reshuffle of the nine-month old coalition government made up of his right-wing Civic Democrats and the smaller Christian Democrat and Green Parties.

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