Just two hours after the Czech upper house of parliament passed the European Union’s Lisbon treaty on Wednesday by a comfortable margin, I found myself in the Prague offices of Mirek Topolanek, the outgoing Czech prime minister. Tired but in good humour, he clearly wanted to hammer home the message that his turbulent four months running the Czech Republic’s EU presidency had been more successful than his critics allowed.
Like his country, which is a medium-sized EU member-state, Topolanek is a figure of medium-sized Shakespearean dimensions – a Coriolanus, not a Hamlet. He has done the noble thing by helping to get Lisbon passed. But he will be out of power on Friday, and he doesn’t want or expect praise from the plebeians elsewhere in the EU.
Topolanek took on the EU presidency knowing that some western European countries doubted the Czechs’ ability to do the job. He also knew that his minority coalition government was quite likely to crash in flames before its six-month term was over. This it did on March 24, thanks to the defection of a few turncoat members of his coalition, who sided with the opposition in a no-confidence vote.
Had that damaged the Czech EU presidency, I asked him? “Clearly. For God’s sake, definitely! What the opposition did, with the help of some others, was something that no one abroad or in the Czech Republic could understand. It’s as if you’re building a sandcastle and someone comes along and destroys it because he can’t stand the fact you’re building something beautiful.”
He used the word “shameful” more than once to describe this humiliation, and to explain why he had insisted on getting the Senate to approve Lisbon, even though he personally is lukewarm about the treaty. “The main reason why it went through the Senate is that the Czech Republic couldn’t afford to end up in a shameful situation twice in two months.”
I thought his most interesting observation – not easy to fit into a news story, but perfect for a blog – was his comparison of how the United States became a nation and how the European Union is going about its own self-construction. “The US was born of war and blood and forceful unification, and also of common values. The European Union, by contrast, is emerging in a peaceful way. Of course, I’m not saying I wish to go down the American way. But the European way is more complicated.”
He has a point. The War of Independence and the Civil War are, to this day, foundation stones of the American national myth. Europe once thought it had its own founding myth in the creation of a peaceful, prosperous community of countries that had cut each other to pieces in two world wars. But will it be enough to bind the EU together over the long term?
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