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As the clock ticks towards the Czech Republic’s takeover of the European Union’s six-month rotating presidency on January 1, there are signs of distinct nervousness in Brussels and some EU capitals over how Prague will cope with the challenge.

For most EU governments, the global financial crisis, economic recession, the fate of the Lisbon institutional reform treaty and relations with Russia will be the top priorities for the first half of next year. And they are not sure the Czechs see things quite the same way or, if they do, will be able to provide effective leadership at a time when the government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has scarcely looked weaker.

The Czechs will be the second former communist country to assume the EU presidency. Slovenia’s spell in the hot seat in the first half of this year was generally considered successful. But some EU diplomats make the point that the Slovenes did not have to confront the full-scale emergency that erupted in the world financial system or handle the Russian invasion of Georgia in August. What a relief that France, an experienced and powerful member-state, was at the controls during these crises - so the argument runs.

Continue reading "An unnerving Czech EU presidency"

Remember Declan Ganley? He’s the British-born businessman who played a big part in Ireland’s rejection in a referendum last June of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty. Ganley often seemed a strange ally for the Irish nationalists, conservative Catholics and leftists who made up the No camp. But I saw him in action in Dublin and there’s no doubt in my mind that he was a formidable campaigner, fatally underestimated by the Irish political establishment.

Thanks to some good reporting by the Irish Times and the Czech newspaper Lidové Noviny, we now know a little more about Ganley. The Czech paper discovered that Ganley had paid a visit to Prague in late July and met President Václav Klaus, the Czech head of state. Klaus is a notorious eurosceptic who, immediately after the Irish vote, declared the Lisbon treaty dead - something not even President Lech Kaczynski of Poland or Gordon Brown, the UK premier, dared do.

As you’d expect, Klaus and Ganley got on like a house on fire. But when the Irish Times asked Ganley for his impressions of Klaus, this was his reply: “He has an amazing background of standing up to the Soviets and is a national hero in the Czech Republic.”

Ah-hem, not quite, Declan. Klaus was a young economist during the Prague Spring, which was crushed by Soviet tanks in August 1968. He worked at the Czechoslovak State Bank from 1971 to 1986, during the long dreary years of repression under Gustáv Husák, the Communist party leader installed after the Soviet-led invasion.

Klaus was certainly no party hack, but to talk of his “amazing” resistance to the Soviet Union is  farcical, as any Czech will tell you. As for his being a “national hero” - dozens of Czechs are drowning in laughter in their beer as I write.

All of which goes to show that running an effective political campaign is not the same as knowing your history.

According to participants at the EU’s post-Irish referendum summit in Brussels, the atmosphere among the 27 national leaders is not one of crisis or despair, but resignation and a sense of having been there and done all this before - i.e., after the French and Dutch threw out the old constitutional treaty in 2005.

However, it’s also clear there are more than a few mutual recriminations going on in the corridors of the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels. “It’s what I’d call the ‘day after effect’,” says one top-level EU official, referring to last week’s Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty.

If Ireland is a problem, what does that make the Czech Republic? The Czechs have been resisting efforts to include a line in the final summit communiqué that would emphasise the EU’s efforts to go ahead with national ratifications of the treaty in spite of the Irish No. This is irritating some delegations, who think the Czechs are riding on the coat-tails of the Irish rather than doing the decent thing - or the courageous thing - and joining the rest of the EU in defending the Lisbon treaty.

The situation at present is that the Czech Senate (upper house of parliament) has sent the Lisbon treaty to the nation’s constitutional court for scrutiny. President Vaclav Klaus has declared the treaty dead - the only EU head of state to go so far. The Irish No, meanwhile, has emboldened critics of the treaty in the ruling Civic Democrat party, whose hold on power is not particularly strong. All of which makes Czech ratification of Lisbon far from a done deal.

Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, is giving private assurances that his government will ratify Lisbon. But when Czech officials appear in front of TV cameras at the summit, they are saying something subtly different. For example, Alexandr Vondra, the Czech minister for European affairs, says the Lisbon treaty is “in the parking lot” and a jolly good thing, too. ”Don’t press us. Any pressure could be counter-productive,” Vondra warns.

In the end, the Czechs may have to buckle. They are due to take over the EU’s rotating presidency next January, and it would create a disastrous impression if, when they move into the hot seat, they were seen as bad team players.

But if I were a betting man, I would not expect the Czechs to have ratified Lisbon by the EU’s next summit on October 15-16.

With apologies to France, whose eagerly awaited European Union presidency has not yet even started, it is tempting to cast one’s eyes forward and wonder what will happen when the Czech Republic begins its six-month spell in the driving seat next January.

The question is preoccupying more people in Brussels than you might think - starting with José Manuel Barroso. The European Commission president went to Prague last month and gave a rather curious speech in which he urged the Czechs to use their presidency “as an opportunity to engage with Europe”. You can’t imagine him needing to say something like that in Dublin, Rome or Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, which holds the EU presidency at the moment.

The problem is that the Czechs earned a reputation, soon after they and seven other countries joined the EU in 2004, as one of the most awkward and Eurosceptical of the new member-states.

Personally, I think it’s unfair. Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform think-tank makes the excellent point that Poland under the Kaczynski twins, and the Greek Cypriots under ex-president Tassos Papadopoulos, were much more prickly. I would add that the Czechs’ experiences as a small nation first in the Habsburg Empire, then at the hands of the Nazis after the British and French betrayal at Munich, and finally under Soviet domination, go a long way to explaining the Czech outlook on the world.

Still, there’s no doubt the Czechs have sometimes rubbed up their EU partners the wrong way. They have persistently brought up human rights violations in Cuba in a way that has exasperated those in Spain who feel Madrid knows best how to handle its former colony.

In President Vaclav Klaus, who openly opposed the EU’s constitutional treaty and who warns of the threats to national sovereignty posed by EU integration, the Czechs have a head of state who is as canny as the Good Soldier Svejk and as politically incorrect as a Brit.

So the worry in Brussels has been that, come next January, the Czechs’ alleged Euroscepticism would find expression in their leadership of the EU. They would, in short, spoil the party for everyone else.

Some of this concern is still around. The Czechs will be the first to hold the EU presidency in the new era launched by the Lisbon treaty, assuming it’s fully ratified by the end of December. They will therefore run the first “diminished presidency”, because from January the EU will have a semi-permanent president to chair summits and represent the EU abroad - you know, the job Tony Blair won’t get.

How to satisfy countries that will hold the rotating EU presidency, but won’t bask in the usual spotlight for six months, is extremely sensitive. It is bothering Sweden, which will assume the EU presidency in July 2009, as much as the Czechs.

But the good news is that the Czech government is already giving serious attention to its presidency. The bureaucratic machinery is in place and the policymakers are developing some interesting ideas. For example, the Czechs have suggested holding a summit of European energy consumers and suppliers to discuss energy security.

More broadly, the Czechs say the three core issues of their presidency will be “Competitiveness, the Four Freedoms [freedom of movement of people, goods, services and capital] and a Liberal Trade Policy”.

Not bad for a bunch of Eurosceptics, eh?