However, as we can see from a good summary in Der Spiegel, it looks like the rest of the EU might well insist on another item, namely Hungary’s new structure of state media supervision. That country’s right-wing ruling party, FIDESZ (the Young Democrats), gained a more than two-thirds majority in the national parliament in elections last April as the country threw out a detested, incompetent, and mendacious Socialist Party government. That enabled FIDESZ to alter the state constitution how it likes, and the new set of media laws are part of a series of sweeping changes the new government has introduced.

The problem is, it plainly looks like the new legal regime for media is designed to impose firm government control, of a sort strange to most free societies that more resembles the sort of Communist regime from which Hungary managed a peaceful transition more than twenty years ago. There is to be a Media Council, inevitably staffed by FIDESZ politicians, with the power to fine TV, radio, magazine and newspaper organizations as it pleases, presumably for any trumped-up charge it can come up with, with no possibility for appeal. Further, journalists from now on will be required to disclose their sources, whenever the matter at issue can be fit by the authorities within the flexible category of “national security.”

Already, even before Hungary has had a chance to assume the Presidency, there have been outcries against these new media laws from within the EU, such as from European Parliament members and even the foreign minister of Luxembourg, who publicly stated that Hungary risks putting itself in the same authoritarian category as Belarus. The Der Spiegel lede states the question baldly: “Can something like this be – in the middle of Europe?”

Unfortunately, this won’t be that easy to address. First, is it really true that the country’s FIDESZ government has in mind the creation of an authoritarian state? Even if so, what can be done? – especially in view of the awkward fact that Hungarian officials will be charged over the next six months with an important leadership role in guiding the EU’s business? The denunciations made public so far are fine, but in the institutional realm EU member-states are rather loathe to chide each other for their internal behavior. (As opposed to candidate states: both the EU itself and its more-powerful member-states see no problem in bossing them around.) I suppose the test-case here could be the shunning of Austria within the EU back in 2000 after Jörg Haider’s right-wing party entered the governing coalition there; I don’t recall that was very effective.

It’s an ugly situation, which I doubt will really ever be addressed in any substantive way. It’s potentially made even worse when you consider the financial dimension: Hungarian premier Victor Orban has been notably hostile to outside pressure to tighten state finances. Yet his country still has its own currency, the forint, and the amazing proportion of native debtors who have obligations denominated in some foreign currency instead (often the Swiss franc) makes them (and those who loaned them money) very vulnerable to any forint loss of value. Watch this space – that is, if you have the sort of morbid curiosity always looking for the next highway pile-up. This could turn out to be another Ireland, but an authoritarian one; that is, it could get very ugly.

UPDATE: Now what was I sayin’? Here’s Josept Cotterill of FT Alphaville on the Fitch rating agency’s downgrade today of Hungarian sovereign debt to BBB-, just one step above “junk” status.

                          

Check out that article title again (with whose translation I promise I took only very slight liberties), though: could someone kindly e-mail to me the German expression for “damn with faint praise”? Kirchgeßner’s purpose here is clearly to bend over backwards to cast the Czech presidency in the best-possible light. His piece’s very first sentence (i.e. after the lede) is “Probably no country has encountered such hostility during its EU presidency as the Czech Republic,” going on to cite all the EU and other national officials (especially the French) who cast doubt on the Czechs’ very competence to handle the assignment, and who continued to cruelly snipe at them thereafter – mostly behind-the-scenes, of course. What is more, it turned out to be a tough time to take up the job, what with the world financial crisis, Israel’s attack into Gaza, new disputes about ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, etc. – oh, and also the latest installment of the perennial Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute, which actually gave the Czechs the opportunity to mediate effectively and so chalk up an early success to their credit.

In reality, though, Kirchgeßner’s piece might just as well have been quite a bit shorter; all he really needed to do was cite the no-confidence vote of March 24 and then come full-stop. Because when you’re EU president you just don’t do that, you just don’t break up the government that for six months is more than a national government, that is in fact entrusted by the rest of the EU to provide at least a little trans-national leadership and for sure quite a lot of trans-national administrative effort and leg-work (to consult, set up meetings, establish agendas, etc.). Numerous other countries, with domestic political scenes just as fractious as the current Czech one or even more so (e.g. Italy), have taken care in the past to start preparing long beforehand to call a temporary truce to their national political conflicts to ensure that they could provide the governmental continuity for the EU presidency that is absolutely necessary – to go a good job and, basically, not to let the rest of the EU down. The Czechs could not do that, and so they should be condemned, not have excuses made for them. (And this does not even take into account the obstructive anti-EU snipings of Czech President Václav Klaus before, during, and after the de facto period of the Czech presidency.)

In essence, remember all that bad-mouthing by the French and all the rest, mentioned above, that the Czechs would not be able to handle the job? Well, they were all proved right, on March 24. And you can forget about “better luck next time,” because there probably will never be a next time: if the Lisbon Treaty is finally ratified, that will do away with the whole system of six-month national EU presidencies in favor of a one-person, elected EU President.

“But it’s easy to overlook that the Czechs are very friendly towards Europe,” Kirchgeßner writes towards the end, looking frantically for some silver lining. They punished the Social Democratic Party – widely seen as responsible for the Topolánek government’s fall – in the recent European elections; they also seem not to think much these days of their Eurosceptic president, either. OK, but what about the Slovaks or the Slovenes, whose friendliness towards the EU arguably goes much further than that of the Czechs, in that they have already taken the bitter economic medicine required to bring themselves within the eurozone? They will never have the chance to serve as EU president, nor will Poland, the most important country of that 2004 EU-entrance cohort of all. But the Czech Republic did get that chance – it’s all a function of the alphabetical-order of a country’s name, belive it or not – and messed it up royally.

                          

Let me take care to note here that that “sad end” cited in Anýž’s title does not refer to now, i.e. the first week of May, but rather indeed to what was supposed to be the “end” of the Czech presidency according to the calendar, namely the end of June. Anýž already knows that that is going to be sad, mainly because that was when the usual semi-annual US-EU summit was supposed to happen, this time in Washington, but the Americans have now let it be known that they want to postpone it to sometime in the fall, when the Swedes will be EU president. Now, you might well say that the Czechs already had their US-EU summit, and in Prague, which happened over the weekend of 4-5 April, following on from the London G20 summit during President Obama’s European trip. But that was officially an “informal” meeting; the US-EU get-together in Washington was really supposed to happen, as it always does, in June. But it won’t.

Meanwhile, Anýž notes that the phrase “Czech EU presidency” seems to have disappeared entirely from the American media. And he quotes an analyst from the German Marshall Fund (in Washington) that the Czechs basically lost three months off of their presidency by the change-of-government, and that leaves hardly enough time for any member-state to accomplish the desired EU agenda with which it would have started its presidency. At least the Czechs did take the ratification process for the Lisbon Treaty all the way up to the point where it only needs the president’s signature; this ensures at least “sad might-have-been” status in the eyes of fellow EU citizens, whereas a failure of ratification would have marked them as something considerably worse.

UPDATE: Here’s another cost of switching your government in the middle of your term as EU president: you stage summits and hardly anybody important bothers to show up.

                          

What were the Czech authorities in charge of EU relations thinking? Černý, after all (whose last name simply means “black”), has always been notorious, it’s accurate to say, rather than just “famous” within the Czech cultural world, bursting onto that scene in 1991 by painting the tank constituting a Soviet war-memorial in Prague a shocking pink color in one daring night-time raid. Although he was briefly arrested for that, that pink tank became a metaphor for the wacky, world-turned-upside down ambiance of the Czech Republic, and Prague in particular, in the years immediately after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution.” Barely pausing to catch his breath, Černý went on to produce a series of additional eye-catching works of sculpture, a few of which you can appreciate on his Wikipedia page. Those “tower babies,” for example: you can pick them out crawling all over the gigantic TV tower, itself located in the Prague 3 district, from much of the rest of the city. And that “riding a dead horse” statue is mighty big and impressive in its own right – look for it at the internal shopping-and-movie-theater-area located within the Lucerna building at the corner of Wenceslas Square and Vodičkova Street (a magnificent building once owned by Václav Havel himself, built by his father – also named Václav Havel).

The thing is, I hope that even with this smallish sample you can still perceive a common theme to Černý’s work. Pink tanks, medieval knights riding their steed upside-down: could we perhaps call it “impishness”? How could the responsible Czech authorities, if they had not been in a coma and/or posted to Outer Mongolia the last fifteen years, ever think that Černý could be induced like a leopard to change his spots and actually produce a “mature” work that the Czech government would be able to present to Brussels without a squabble?

Even more, how could they be so “out of it” as to let things get to so far a stage as the sculpture actually successfully being mounted in its allotted space at the European Council building without anyone in charge looking askance? But they were, and it was, and if you don’t care to follow the NYT link to find out what exactly the problem is, I can reveal to you here that what Černý came up with (and named “Entropa”) was a sculpture representing some kind of plastic-frame structure that you get when you purchase a model of some airplane, with the individual pieces placed within that frame by a thin plastic link, designed to be broken off so you can glue everything together. Except that here the individual pieces are shaped in the forms of the 27 EU member-states, but with artistic flourishes added on to them to poke a little satirical fun at each country. The piece that has raised the most ruckus so far is Bulgaria, as that country is depicted by Černý as nothing more than an assembly of interconnected Turkish toilets (i.e. squat holes-in-the-floor), but Černý manages to lampoon each member-state, including his own.

(We’ll go over them state-by-state shortly. By the way, a lesser “scandalous” aspect of this affair is that, in his proposal for the commission, Černý promised to work with artists from all member-states so that the artistic vision of how to depict each country would come from a native, but in the end he apparently did all the “conceptual” work himself working together with two of his friends.)

“It’s Only Art – And I Don’t Like It!”

The context here naturally points to the Czech press as best-placed to add some informational value to the NYT account. Turning to the leading business newspaper, Hospodářské noviny, we have Vondra and Černý apologize for Entropa. A part might be removed. The quotes are basically what is worth paying attention to in this piece. That “Vondra” is Alexandr Vondra, Czech vice-premier and in charge of European affairs, and now he is protesting his horror at how Černý could surprise him so unexpectedly. He states, “We think that Entropa is a work of art – nothing more, nothing less. I hope that we can agree on that with the rest of the European Union. It does not have to be anything that makes up the image of the Czech Republic or the government and does not represent our view of European lands either.” Furthermore, Vondra expresses his willingness to be open to reactions from other European states and even to institute changes/removals to the work if such were insisted upon. As for Černý, the article actually quotes him thusly: “We deliberately led them [meaning the EU countries and the Czech government] into error [i.e. pulled the wool over their eyes]. For us it was not about insulting anyone but ourselves. I did not make use of any State funds for the installation and I in fact returned them.”

Then we have an accompanying article, also in HN, A difficult day dawns in Brussels. The Czechs must convince the EU that they are witty. About the only new thing this piece adds in its text is the interesting “see no evil” attitude to the controversy on the part of the current Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolánek: “I don’t understand art that much, so I don’t know whether that is a work of art.” But he does hope to be able to get around to seeing it for the first time – some day. (Don’t worry, Mirek, as premier of the country with the EU presidency, you’re not going to be able to avoid Brussels – or the European Council or the building where it is housed – even if you tried.)

But the real valuable aspect of this HN article is that, down below, it has a click-on-the-picture gallery of the individual countries as Černý and his drinking-buddies chose to depict them – or of most of them. (In the following I go in order top row to bottom row, left to right.)

• The UK: It’s not there at all! Its spot in the “frame-of-model-pieces” is taken up by a big space that looks like that piece has already been removed.
  
• Hungary: Strange indeed. You see Hungary filled with melons, and a structure arising in the middle that looks like Brussels’ famous Atomium, but here composed of melons at the vertices, connected by sticks of Hungarian salami!
  
• Lithuania: A straightforward message here: five sculptures of Brussels’ famous Mannekin Pis statue are presented, all of them “mannekin pissing” over into neighboring Belarus.
  
• Austria: Shown as a nice, grassy country – but with four nuclear-reactor towers right in the middle! It’s appropriate, as Austria has famously been hyper-sensitive to the (Soviet-era design) nuclear reactors located in neighboring countries (mainly the Czech Republic and Slovakia), from way back in Communist times.
  
• Bulgaria: As already described, an interconnected arrangement of squat toilets.
  
• The Czech Republic: This one is hard to understand, as it appears to be simply a glossy-blue silhouette of the country, with golden trim. But located within that silhouette there should be placed (they were supposed to appear at the time of the dedication ceremony) various statements of current Czech President Václav Klaus. They’re mocking Klaus like he’s some sort of latter-day Chairman Mao – get it?
  
• Romania: Made up to look like a Dracula theme-park. Not too original, don’t you think?
  
• Cyprus: The bloc-figure of Cyprus is cut in two and sways apart into the two halves. But that’s because, in fact, Cyprus itself is an island divided in two parts, where it’s really only the southern, Greek part that is an EU member-state.
  
• Latvia: Latvia is depicted “as if we had mountains,” when in reality Latvia has no mountains. I guess Latvians dream of having mountains.
  
• Finland: This one I have a hard time understanding myself. Finland is shown with various exotic, red-colored animals on it: a hippo, an elephant, a crocodile. Of course, in reality such animals are to be found there only in Helsinki’s zoo, if even there. But the figure of Finland itself is clearly made out of planks of wood, so at least that is very accurate about Finland.
  
• Greece: Greece is depicted as a scorched, burned-out land. For whatever reason.
  
• Ireland: Depicted as a big set of bagpipes.
  
• Malta: A pedestal with an elephant on it, and a big magnifying glass for looking at the (smallish) elephant with. Because elephants are said to have lived on Malta 20,000 years ago, you see.
  
• Luxembourg: An ingot of gold shaped like Luxembourg, with a “For Sale” sign extending from it. OK, finally one that is understandable.
  
• The Netherlands: Flooded with water, from which only seven minarets protrude. Finally one that is actually excellent, very spot-on!
  
• Italy: Italy as one big soccer-field, complete with players.
  
• Estonia: Simply with modern, up-to-date versions of both hammer and sickle. Rather cruel to the Estonians, who would gladly pay to have their country towed out to sea so that it could be located far, far away from Russia.
  
• Belgium: A candy-box, with chocolate bon-bons and those famous Belgian pralines.
  
• Portugal: Shown as a chopping-bloc with three chunks of raw meat on it. Interestingly, those chunks are themselves shaped like Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique. So this is a comment about Portuguese colonialism.
  
• Spain: Was just as colonial as Portugal, probably more (although not as late). Nonetheless, Černý and his team depict the country as just a building-site, with a stray uncovered, unexploded bomb (from the Spanish Civil War?).
  
• France: Short and sweet: Covered by a banner proclaiming “Strike!”
  
• Germany: Overlaid with nine strips of what is obviously autobahn – which some see as arranged in a vaguely swastika pattern.
  
• Sweden: Not in the form of Sweden, but just a long box – like the kind IKEA furniture comes in. (Get it?) But this time, the “furniture” inside is apparently Gripen fighter-planes.
  
• Slovenia: Just an inscription carved in English: “first tourists came here 1213.” Ha ha. Actually, the lands that are Slovenia were very close to the Roman Empire, so that Černý and his team could have added a “B.C.” to that “1213″ and probably been more correct.
  
• Slovakia: Depicted as a joint of Hungarian salami, bound together with string in the three Hungarian colors of red, white and green. Rather insulting to the Slovaks, I must say, who have had considerable problems with Hungary through their history, including a certain tension remaining between the two countries even today, due in part to the considerable number of Hungarian-speaking minority citizens in parts of southern Slovakia. You’d half-think that this would be the next one (i.e. after Bulgaria) to prompt an official diplomatic protest and a withdrawal – but would the Slovaks want to be so openly rude to the Hungarians by doing that?

Who’s missing? Denmark, for one! Poland, for another! I really would like to know the take from Černý & co. on those countries, but no amount of Google-imaging has turned anything up yet. The only clue about Denmark that I have is from this article from the Kristeligt Dagblad ((but which is sourced to the Danish news-agency Ritzau; title is “Scandal-artist apologizes to everybody”) that Denmark is presented as made out of Lego-blocks (OK, makes sense) in a way that somehow recalls the famous “Mohammed-cartoon” drawing of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban. Interesting! If/when I find pictures for the Danish or Polish entries on-line I’ll post an update with the links – if I remember.

UPDATE 1: Can’t anybody be thorough and comprehensive anymore? You can go here to see a slide-show of many – but not all – of the EU member-states as portrayed in Entropa. This includes Poland, which shows four men dressed as priests raising a flag Iwo Jima-style – the rainbow flag of the Gay Rights movement! I’m still looking for a picture of Denmark, though.

                          

I’ve got another indirect take for you here: Questions of leverage apart, has the question crossed your mind as to why on earth there appear to be two EU delegations heading to Israel to try to influence things there, namely the one headed by the Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg and the one with French president Nicolas Sarkozy? Seems rather inefficient, no? Still, it all becomes perfectly logical in light of the fear and loathing felt across the EU at the accession – brought about simply by the requirements of the EU calendar – of the Czech Republic and Václav Klaus to the EU presidency for the next six months. To these observers, the contrast between what they fear from the Czechs and the admirable activism that marked France’s just-completed term at the presidency is so agonizing that they simply can’t let go – and thus you see, in effect, both “before” and “after” versions of EU diplomatic delegations in the MidEast.

This fear of what the Czechs may bring to the EU at what has turned out to be a crucial period, both for its internal affairs and its external relations, is real. Quite apart from the beginner’s mistakes you can expect from a small country undertaking the presidency for the first time, there is great worry over Klaus’ controversial stands on various EU issues and how they might serve to gum up the works still further. (A broad segment even of Czech opinion shares these concerns, by the way. I’ve got to see if I can find an article or two out of the Czech press about that to discuss.) But today there comes a most interesting opinion piece in the Financial Times Deutschland, by Nils Kreimeier (Witch-hunt in Prague), that bravely takes up the unconventional view that maybe Václav Klaus is not someone to worry much about but rather is the sort of personality that the EU should welcome.

Kreimeier’s lede: “The strong revulsion towards the Czech EU presidency reveals an inability to handle conflicts. Old Europe can’t just maneuver around contrary opinions.” His target is what he calls the “consensus in a core Europe dominated by the French and Germans” – the EU conventional wisdom, if you like. This consensus is very “green”-oriented, it certainly looks to European governments for action to counter-act the current economic crisis, and, above all, it seeks to have the Lisbon Treaty finally ratified by all the EU states and so take effect as, in essence, that body’s new constitutional treaty.

On all these points of that Franco-German consensus – and, rest assured, some others, too – Václav Klaus has come out on the other side. Even more than that, the Czech president’s very personality has brought him out on the other side in the most provocative way possible (including a notorious trip to Ireland he made last year – that’s the country that rejected the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum last June, you will recall – where he took the time to meet with the head of a very prominent anti-Lisbon Treaty advocacy organization). As Kreimeier puts it, “Klaus does not tone down his often doubtful positions, he does not allow himself to be convinced . . . . He is a conflict-loving politician.” This rather prickly disposition, together with the timing that happens to give his country the EU presidency now, naturally turns him into the renegade that all good EU advocates love to hate.

Franco-German Arrogance

But Kreimeier suggests that that is a much too simplistic view to take; it does seem that there is much more opposition to the Lisbon Treaty, for example, than this conventional wisdom likes to admit. And he buttresses his argument with two delicious examples of that French-German EU arrogance in action. For one, he briefly reminds us of Jacques Chirac’s comments in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq when confronted with an anti-Saddam, pro-US petition originating mostly from the EU’s newer members from Eastern Europe, namely that they had “missed their chance to shut up.” But he devotes rather more length, at the very beginning of his piece, to describe a visit to Prague Castle and President Klaus by three Euro-MPs at the beginning of last month. Two were German, one really French-German (namely Daniel Cohn-Bendit, or Danny the Red), and of course they were worried about the upcoming Czech presidency. As Kreimeier describes it, Cohn-Bendit brought along an EU flag on a flag-stand and during the meeting ostentatiously set it out on Klaus’ desk, to see what he would do. This gesture was a clear reference to a mini-controversy that had raged a little while before, in which the then-EU president, Sarkozy, had criticized Klaus for never allowing the EU flag to be flown publicly at Prague Castle.

Kreimeier (unfortunately) does not describe Klaus’ reaction; I guess that if there had been actual fisticuffs and bloodshed, we all would have found out about it. But the point is rather the sort of attitude – the French-German EU consensus attitude – that Cohn-Bendit’s gesture revealed. Kreimeier:

Now, there would have been good reasons against such a gesture. For one, it had been about 70 years since the Germans changed the flag-arrangements in Prague the last time [a reference to the Nazi take-over in Prague of March, 1939] – something that for many Czechs is still very contemporary. For another, countries like the Czech Republic, Poland, or Hungary entered the EU because they hoped that no one would ever prescribe to them again which flags they had to hoist.

So “Lay off Václav Klaus!” is Kreimeier’s message. He “does not represent any viewpoint that would be inconsistent with the EU’s fundamental principles [Grundverständnis].” More importantly, the EU cannot do itself any favors by ceasing to think, by ceasing to be open to new ideas and contrary opinions – in effect, by fossilizing itself in a hide-bound consensus. It may even be that unpleasant gadflies in the mold of Václav Klaus, who at least are willing to overturn the applecart of accepted opinion, are precisely the personalities who are key to the EU’s future.

                          

From the very beginning of the European Union (i.e. from 1958; it was then known as the European Economic Community) the member-states have taken turns, at six-month intervals, at assuming the “EU presidency,” although the role is more-accurately described as the presidency/chairmanship of the Council of the European Union, which is the legislative forum for the member-states and usually the most-powerful of the EU’s component institutions. Naturally, the queue of countries waiting to serve their turn as president includes all EU member-states, and it was in the first half of this year that the first country from the great 10-country EU enlargement of May, 2004, had its turn as president, namely Slovenia.

The thing is, the second half of 2008 has proved to be far-from-normal times. First there was the diplomatic crisis over the conflict between Russia and Georgia, and now we have the international system of finance seriously in need of some restructuring. France is now EU President, and French president Nicolas Sarkozy has by all accounts done a credible job in responding to the worldwide financial panic. (His intervention in the Russian-Georgian conflict to secure the cease-fire was subject to rather more mixed reviews.) The comfort the EU has had with Sarkozy as point-man on that crisis may have much to do with the French president’s own personal qualities, but it also stems from France’s status as one of the EU’s major powers and its deep and capable governmental machinery. What if one or more of these grave problems had arisen during the Slovenian presidency: could President Danilo Turk and the Slovenian government have effectively handled the task of leading the EU response?

Of even more urgency is the question is “Will Václav Klaus (president), Mirek Topolánek (premier) and the rest of the Czech government be able to handle taking over the EU presidency as scheduled on January 1, 2009?” It will be the first time that country has ever had that responsibility, of course. In addition to sheer inexperience, the Czech Republic is a relatively small member-state anyway (10 million population); more serious is the fact that it does not use the euro (and probably won’t qualify to do so for at least a couple more years), so that Czech representatives routinely have found themselves not invited to the vital meetings of the Euro-zone that have take place over the past few weeks.

That is why the idea has surfaced – probably from French sources, admittedly – to keep Sarkozy and France on as EU president well into next year, until the beginning of the following year in fact, at least when it comes to financial/economic matters and, as Bos reported at his press conference, discussion about this is ongoing within EU circles. This would be quite a break from 50-year-old EU procedure, of course. As for one country handling financial/economic matters and another handling the rest, how does that work? Where is the boundary-line? Already Germany, the UK, and Luxembourg have indicated that they are not interested in any such thing, the NRC article (with no by-line) reports. The Netherlands, though, if Bos’ remarks are any indication, could find something like that acceptable – provided, however, that the continued independence of the European Central Bank from political influence is guaranteed, something that Sarkozy has tried to undermine in the past.

That any such measure would amount to something of an insult towards the Czech Republic (“Sorry guys: we don’t think you can handle the job!”) is one aspect to which none of the EU leaders who are discussing this plan seem to be devoting much thought. But all of that becomes understandable once again when you remember that the Czech president is still Václav Klaus, who is way down the list of the EU’s favorite national leaders. Long-term readers of this blog will recall that Klaus was rather alarmingly stand-offish about the EU even back just previous to the Czech Republic’s accession referendum in June, 2004. (OK, so maybe in the €S context “long-term reader” is more of a theoretical concept – well, except: Hi Mom! Anyway, if you want to check out my past treatment of Václav Klaus’ rather strained attitude towards the EU, you could start here.) He has adopted the same idea towards the Lisbon Treaty, which he plainly is opposed to: after the “No” in the June Irish referendum, he straight-out declared it to be null-and-void, which is something you’re just not supposed to say in polite EU society.

Topolánek in Danger of Toppling

But it’s not just Václav Klaus, or the fact that the Czech Republic is not in the Euro-zone that has the idea of an upcoming Czech EU presidency making people queasy. In the Czech Republic the president fulfills a mostly ceremonial role as head-of-state (similar to Germany, say, or the UK’s Queen Elizabeth) anyway, and it’s the actual functioning government of premier Mirek Topolánek that is looking shaky, according to a new analysis by Kilian Kirchgessner in the Frankfurter Rundschau (Everyone Vexes Topolánek). Regional elections held last weekend resulted in serious losses for his ODS party, and defections of ODS members of the national legislature from personal loyalty to Topolánek are increasing, to the point that there is a serious risk he will be replaced as party leader. A no-confidence motion against his government in the Czech parliament earlier this week turned out to be premature, but nonetheless Topolánek has even cancelled a visit he was supposed to make to the White House and George W. Bush next week to stay home and try to save his political skin. Maybe there was another, hidden reason for the cancellation, though – and I don’t mean Bush’s increasing lame-duck irrelevance; most friendly world leaders like to visit the White House and get that presidential photo-op no matter what. As Kirchgessner reports in his FR piece, Topolánek, having signed on 8 July the treaty to establish a US-run missile-defense radar site in the Czech Republic, may now be in danger of failing to gain the necessary ratification of that pact from the Czech parliament. Polls show that two-thirds of the Czech population disapproves of the deal; Topolánek’s ODS government went ahead and signed the treaty anyway, but a big part of the success of the opposition parties last weekend stemmed from the public’s unhappiness.

It fell earlier this year to little Slovenia to demonstrate that the EU’s new and small members could still be competent to run the Union’s affairs effectively as President of the Council, and by all accounts they did a good job. (Of course, they had few demands placed on them; and remember that Cyprus will take over the presidency in the second half of 2012! How are we feeling about that?) The Czechs, in contrast, look seriously in danger of dropping the ball for their fellow new member-states. Maybe Sarkozy would be preferable after all.

                          

Why do we care about the Netherlands’ priorities when it comes to the European economy? Because that country holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of this year, of course. Its immediate predecessors, the Irish, set as their goals agreement on both an EU Constitution for presentation to member-states for ratification, and finding a new EU Commission president to replace Romano Prodi on schedule at the end of this month, and even achieved them – no mean feat. The Dutch, in their turn, “intend to help Europe escape from economic stagnation,” reports Le Monde writer Arnaud Leparmentier.

LISBON – AGAIN

It seems the main method they intend to use is resuscitating the “Lisbon Strategy” or “Declaration” from the year 2000, in which then-EU leaders made known their intention to make the EU “the most competitive knowledge-economy in the world” in ten years’ time. In response to which the Dutch premier, Jan Peter Balkenende, asked an EU meeting on Wednesday of last week, “Did you know that it is eleven times more difficult to start a company in Europe as in the US? Did you know that more than a third of Europe’s active population does not work? . . . And did you know that in Japan the number of researchers is one-and-a-half times more than in Europe?”

“The problem,” Balkenende went on, “is that we lack the dynamism to put into action the strategy that we formulated together.” Unfortunately, Leparmentier then notes that the Dutch recognize that about the most they can do about it is this short of exhortation, rather than any sort of direct action via EU institutions – maybe they read yesterday’s treatment from Die Zeit that maintained that the Union’s constitutional arrangements, now and in the future, don’t allow for much common action when it comes to economics.

DON’T FORGET THE SQUABBLING!

The rest of Leparmentier’s article also sounds notes that jibe rather awkwardly with this idea of “helping Europe out of economic stagnation.” There’s the EU budget, which is supposed to be bigger from 2007. Most member-states want it to amount to around 1.15% of combined EU GDP, but those states which contribute more to EU finances than they receive back intend to keep it to just 1%. Among those countries is the Netherlands; Balkenende has been heard to complain about “a Dutchman paying six times more [into EU coffers] than a Frenchman.” What’s more, his finance minister (and deputy premier), Gerrit Zalm, has pronounced quite clearly that, if the Commission fails to come up with a budget that respects the 1% limit, then the Dutch presidency can just faire cavalier seul (that’s of course the French translation of what he originally said in Dutch or in English; it roughly means “play the lone knight,” i.e. go it alone – think George W. Bush) and come up with its own “more clear” spending priorities. Balkenende is supposedly so hot-under-the-collar about how much Dutch citizens are paying that he has started to agitate for a give-back mechanism for the Netherlands to get two-thirds of that excess as a rebate, something only the UK presently gets. (It was extracted from the EU under threat of handbag by then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher back in the 1980s.) Does that sound like Dutch leaders are really prepared to play the white knight – not the lone knight – and lead the rest of the EU out of stagnation?

Balkenende and Co. also want to re-open the subject of expenses for the CAP, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. That’s always a good idea in principle, but changes to the CAP inevitably give rise to bitter argument between EU countries, and furthermore the last time those arguments raged part of the settlement was an agreement to freeze the CAP budget (i.e. not argue about it anymore) until 2013. There’s also supposed to be a debate getting underway – this one not necessarily sponsored by the Dutch presidency, although it could be a good means to get the EU budget back down to 1% – about cutting the monies the EU pays out to help its poorer regions, the prospect of which is making a whole new set of EU actors uncomfortable.

All of this, and a lame-duck Commission, too, for most of that Dutch presidency! (The present Commission stays in office until 1 November, at which point a new and expanded one – 25 commissioners, one per member-state – comes in under new President Barroso.) It’s a mess! Don’t get your expectations up.

“BLACK” WORK IN THE UNION

As a footnote, also from Le Monde, we have this article, The Weight of “Black” Work in the New EU, “black work” of course defined as work-for-pay that is itself a legal activity, but that is simply not reported to the authorities, for tax-avoidance and various other reasons. A recent study undertaken for the European Commission by a Dutch and a Swedish research center shows that “black” work in the EU varies from 1.5% of GDP in Austria to more than 20% in Greece (16% or 17% in Italy; only 2% in the UK; etc.). Among the corollaries to this phenomenon: “black” work is caused – as we more-or-less already know – by “the rigidity of the labor market, the weight of the tax authorities, and a lack of confidence in the function of the State”; women have worse working-conditions and worse pay in “black” work than men, and also are more likely to undertake it because they need the money, rather than for extra, non-essential spending-money; and particularly in some of the new Eastern European member-states (Poland, Hungary, and Slovenia are cited), the authorities aren’t particularly interested in acting against “black” work, since they view it as useful for relieving unemployment and so easing social tensions. Plus, they have a long tradition of such activities under the old Communist regimes.

The study was undertaken as the Commission embarks on the goal it has set for itself to “regularize” black work, i.e. stamp it out, I suppose. Good luck; the only recommendations it can come up with so far to do that is to undo as much as possible the conditions cited above that move people not to report such income in the first place, and to offer amnesties whereby people can report past income and not get into trouble for not having reported it back when they were supposed to.

                          

The incident took place in the debate after Berlusconi had made his “inaugural” address to Parliament.

German MEP Martin Schulz, deputy leader of the social democrat faction in the European Parliament, soon brought up the issue of the law Berlusconi’s government had engineered and put through the Italian parliament (discussed in my last EuroSavant post, here) giving immunity from prosecution to the top five Italian government officials, which had had the convenient effect of stopping an ongoing bribery trial against Berlusconi in Milan in its tracks. This reference apparently annoyed the Italian prime minister, who told Herr Schulz (in Italian, of course, but everyone at the EP gets simultaneous translation services) “Mr. Schulz, I know there is a producer in Italy who is making a film on Nazi concentration camps. I will suggest you for the role of kapo [i.e. a prisoner who works for the prison authorities]. You’d be perfect.”

An uproar apparently quite unprecedented for the normally-staid European legislature promptly ensued; while still up at the podium, Berlusconi was called upon by several MEPs to take back his remark, but he became huffy and defensive and refused to do so. Anyway, he said, he had meant the remark to be ironic. And so the spat soon escalated into a diplomatic dispute between two of the EU’s biggest member-states, since the German government could not stand idly by in the face of such an offense against one of its representatives and a public reference to Naziism. On Wednesday night the Italian ambassador to Germany was summoned to Bundeskanzler Schröder’s office to hear about how Berlusconi’s comments were “unacceptable” and “condemned.” At the same time, the German ambassador to Italy was called in to the Italian Foreign MInistry to hear about Martin Schulz’s offenses against Silvio Berlusconi – not to mention, it seems, against “Italian and European institutions.”

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berlusconi has finally come out with an apology of a sort, but directed to the German people. This does not come straight from Berlusconi himself, but from what he is reported to have said to a meeting Wednesday evening of the “People’s Party” faction of the European Parliament, the right-wing faction to which Berlusconi’s native Forza Italia party belongs. The article goes on to mention the very real fear among MEPs that the Italian premier’s conflict-of-interest problems in Italy (not only his avoiding trial by the passing of that immunity law, but also the fact that he personally owns most Italian TV stations), if not addressed or at least condemned, could infect European institutions and those of other member-states. It quotes Antonio di Pietro (now MEP, formerly a leading judge in the “clean hands” corruption investigations that swept Italy in the 1990s) as warning how the “virus of conflict-of-interest” could be “a cancerous growth on democracy.” Still, MEPs generally had decided to keep quiet initially about Berlusconi, to see what he had to say and to give him a fair chance to say it – until he lost his self-control at the podium and outrage ensued.

You’d expect the German press to show similar outrage. They do, of course, but it is mostly tempered by worry: This semester will be an important one for the European Union, there’s a lot of important business to get done, and Berlusconi is the only possible EU president whom we have to rely on to get it done. That was the tenor of a companion commentary piece in yesterday’s FAZ, entitled Nicht weiter so – “It can’t go on like this.” Interestingly, in the division the FAZ makes between “urgent” and “desirable” European projects, it puts “the strengthening of Europe and improvement in relations with America” in the former category and “the conclusion of the EU Constitution” in the latter; the editors are apparently well-aware that a December “Treaty of Rome” doesn’t have to happen, that work on the constitution can also be wrapped up in the spring. (Maybe they’re also saying that the bad will that Italy has now harvested among the rest of Europe means that the rest of Europe is not likely to allow Italy to have that prestige, no matter how smoothly the constitutional Intergovernmental Conference proceeds.) Ultimately, they conclude, those offended by the Italian premier need to think hard about how far they really want to go, how much damage to important European affairs they really want to cause; if they go too far, it could turn out to be a serious “lose-lose” proposition for everyone.

In its own commentary on the affair, with it’s hard-headed businessman’s practicality the FT Deutschland agrees: “The EU will have to learn to live with Berlusconi,” because any boycott of the current EU president would “provoke a serious crisis, which could seriously burden [EU] expansion as well as further work on the EU Constitution.” At the same time, says the FT, this ought to be a lesson that that new constitution should provide for the election – and the removal – of the president. Indeed, the proposed constitution does provide for this, and this is one element that large member-states (such as Germany, naturally) favor and to which most smaller member-states are opposed, mainly because they will lose their chance to show themselves off and impact EU proceedings directly during their turn at the presidency if the current rotating system is thereby abolished.

Die Welt adds that the fact that the Italian ambassador to Berlin was called directly into Gerhard Schröder’s office to hear Germany’s complaints – and not to the Foreign Ministry, as would be normal procedure – shows how angry the German government truly is. In fact, the newspaper reports that Schröder has already had a chance to go before the Bundestag today (Thursday) to demand that Berlusconi “apologize in all forms for the unacceptable comparison” involving Nazi concentration camps, which was “in content and in form a blunder (“eine Entgleisung“) and fully unacceptable.” Berlusconi reportedly does not get along very well with Schröder anyway – or with Jacques Chirac. (Or, as I mentioned in yesterday’s entry, with EU Commission president Romano Prodi – maybe this really isn’t the kind of guy we want for EU president!) Die Welt reports further that, as for Martin Schulz (as told to the Berliner Zeitung), an apology from Berlusconi would not be good enough. Berlusconi needs to apologize to the European Council (i.e. to his fellow EU heads of government), since he has harmed their interests with his behavior.

By the way, I wish I could reproduce for you here the head-shots of Berlusconi shown in some of the on-line newspapers (e.g. Die Welt, but also the Guardian): he’s shown with an insane smile on his face, like some sort of jokester or clown – or jackal. But I can’t – I’d have to obtain the rights, of course, so I can only offer the links. (In fact, you had to act fast to see the picture I’m talking about on the Guardian website, because it was on their homepage rather than on the article (the sub-page). I’m afraid it’s already gone – as of 1130 hours GMT on Thurs., 3 July 03. If you still happen to see Berlusconi’s face on the Guardian homepage, it’s probably not the impish, smiling picture I was talking about.)

Finally, the Süddeutsche Zeitung has some interesting reporting about Italian reaction. Naturally, Romano Prodi is speechless (“fassungslos“); this is no great day for Italy, he opines. Even the deputy Italian prime minister, Gianfranco Fini, weighs in. “Berlusconi was provoked by Herr Schulz and lost his composure,” he says. Still, he didn’t have any right “to disparage a political opponent as a Kapo,” and should apologize. Gerhard Schröder, and the Bundestag, are waiting.

                          

Except that there may be a problem. Berlusconi has been having continuing trouble with the Italian courts – right, that sort of trouble, when they think you did something nasty and want to send you off to the slammer for a while. Indeed, he has already been convicted three times for various acts of corruption (perpetrated in his pre-prime minister days, when he was busy accumulating his fortune), but all of these are either under appeal or past the statute of limitations. Then there is his ongoing case in Milan, where he is accused of bribing judges back in the 1980s; one of the judges presiding in that case has come to the end of his term in office and so needs to be replaced, but under normal circumstances that would only give rise to a minor delay.

But these are anything but normal circumstances, when you’re talking about criminal charges against the current head of government. In fact, there may not be a problem anymore, since the Italian parliament passed on June 18 a law making the holders of the top five political posts in Italy – thus including Berlusconi – immune from prosecution while in office. So it seems that he will still have to face up to pending charges once he leaves office – although by then more statute-of-limitation considerations may come into play – but he is free from the hassle until then, including during the imminent Italian EU presidency.

Other European observers see a problem nonetheless. Today EuroSavant returns to Germany for comment – among other reasons, because it’s from there that the most heartfelt cry of dismay at the Italian premier’s new responsibilities has been issued. In fact, it comes from Michael Müller, who is deputy head of the of the SPD faction in the Bundestag. (American readers: Think deputy majority leader in the House of Representatives.) “Berlusconi harms Italy and now also Europe,” Müller wrote yesterday, reports Der Spiegel. “Italy’s head of government undermines the independence of the judiciary, tailors the laws to fit his preferences, makes the state’s interests identical to his own, and subjugates the media. Berlusconi is Corruption personified.” (That last sentence in the original German was Berlusconi ist der Filz in Person. Thanks to my friend Jonas, from Berlin, for help with the translation.) Müller also termed Berlusconi der Raufbold aus Mailand – “the ruffian from Milan.” (Il teppista da Milano, for all you Italians out there; always happy to do my bit for German-Italian relations!) Der Spiegel topped this off by putting Berlusconi on this week’s cover, seated on what looks like a throne, with the words Der Pater – “The Godfather” – superimposed. And there is a raft of other articles about the Italian prime minister in that issue, none particularly complimentary – one details the lack of success Berlusconi has so far had with his business dealings in Germany (with a sigh of relief?).

Yes, I guess it’s not a good thing to have someone who is in so much trouble with his local law, and who at the same time so cynical about doing what it takes to duck the heat, as president of the EU, representing it to the outside world. In particular, he represents it to that part of the “outside world” that is about to become “inside,” i.e. the ten soon-to-be-EU-members, most of whom still have problems when it comes to such things as corruption and the independence of the media. As the EU keeps up its pressure on these states to reform these aspects of their societies, it would be nice to have as president someone from a state with a bit better record in those matters itself.

An article in today’s Die Welt takes the baton from Der Spiegel in the Berlusconi-bashing stakes. Forget his problems in the courts; reporter Andreas Middel is more worried about the effect of the Italian premier’s idiosyncrasies on Italy’s six-month EU presidency. This was the man who, shortly after the September 11 attacks, trumpeted “the superiority of Western culture” over Islam (so much for diplomatic ties with Arab states); who advocates that Turkey, Israel, and – yes – Russia be admitted as EU members as soon as possible (doesn’t have the Union have enough on its plate as it is with the ten states joining next year?); who acted like an attack-dog at a past EU summit to grab the newly-established European Food Safety Authority for Parma over Helsinki (“the Finns don’t even know how one eats ham” he remarked at the time). And it seems he has a serious running feud with the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi. And his agenda for EU affairs for the next six months, writes Middel, is disturbingly murky.

The German press is an interesting place to go for reactions to Berlusconi assuming the EU presidency not only for Michael Müller’s comments, but also in light of what is going on these day in Germany itself. No, of course I don’t refer to any cynical attempt by Bundeskanzler Schröder to pass a law relieving him (if only temporarily) of his legal problems – I don’t believe he has any legal problems, anyway. What he does have is very serious policy problems, especially on the economic front (we’ve covered this before in EuroSavant, here), reflected among other things in the growing German government budget deficit.

That deficit is set to go over 3% of GDP for the next couple of years (at least), for sure, and Schröder and his government are caring less and less about that. (The SPD-Green government just recently decided to try to have planned tax cuts, averaging 10% for all German citizens, moved forward in time to next year.) But they should care about that, you see, because the EU’s “Growth and Stability Pact” says that EU governments aren’t allowed to let their budget deficits grow beyond 3% of GDP; if they do, they’re supposed to be hit with hefty fines from the EU (which, admittedly, makes the budget deficit problem even worse). Ironically, that “Growth and Stability Pact” was something insisted on by Germany, and that in connection with choosing countries which would be allowed to introduce the common European currency, the euro. In particular, Italy was one of the countries at which that “Growth and Stability Pact” was aimed! It’s those irresponsible Latins, you know: they can’t be trusted to put their fiscal house in order, so you need to bind them with a treaty so that, once they have the euro, they don’t go off and borrow up a storm and so endanger Europe’s credit-rating for everyone else. But just look now – ha ha! – it’s Italy that is in fine fiscal shape, and it’s Germany which is tossing aside the very rules that it had earlier insisted on – for others, at least. (For that matter, for all that Americans – especially Texans – think of Mexicans, I’ve little doubt that the Mexican government carries less proportional debt these days than George W. Bush’s administration.)

So maybe Germany, and German government officials and political representatives, might want to be a bit more careful now when they condemn the conduct or the qualifications of their southern EU neighbors. Fortunately, a commentary article by Heinz-Joachim Fischer in yesterday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung helps restore equilibrium somewhat. Italians, and the Italian parliament, will decide about Berlusconi, Fischer quotes Piero Fassino (Secretary of the PDS, the main left-wing Italian opposition – formerly the Italian Communist Party, but that’s a long story) as saying; Fassino adds that, in so doing, Italians do not need “polemic help from national and international media, from foreign governments and even from the justice system.” Besides, Fischer writes, the upturn in Italy’s economy that has already occurred during Berlusconi’s two years in power makes most Italians feel that they aren’t being governed badly at all. Finally, this second half of 2003 is shaping up to be an important period for the EU – among other reasons, because of the Intergovernmental Conference starting in October, which is supposed to reconcile the differing viewpoints of all fifteen-plus-ten governments about the draft EU Constitution to produce a final version that can be offered for ratification in the spring. Indeed, the Italians are ambitiously dreaming of a second “Treaty of Rome” (second, that is, to the Treaty of Rome of 1957 which originally established the European Economic Community, forerunner to the EU), signed in the Italian capital at the EU summit there scheduled for December. But that means winding up the work at that Intergovernmental Conference in two short months – a goal many (including myself) regard as wishful thinking.

Still, let the Italians get to work on that, Fischer writes; stop bugging them about the nature of the man they elected to lead them.