The answer to that remains up in the air, as the summit continues into the weekend. What we do already know, however, is that an important split has occurred within the EU, resulting from the failure of German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy to have accepted by all 27 member-states their proposals for greater national budget control and coordination. Now the action on that front has shifted to the group of 17 member-states who actually use the euro.

The excellent “Charlemagne” commentator from the Economist has already termed this development Europe’s great divorce, in an article (in English, of course) featuring at its head a picture of the defiant-looking British PM David Cameron pointing an aggressive finger towards the camera. And indeed, this one and many other press reports from the summit would have their readers believe that the UK is isolated in its stand of resistance against those “Merkozy” proposals for greater EU power over national budgets. That is certainly also the message from the authoritative German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, where an analytical piece from Michael König is rather dramatically entitled Bulldog Cameron bites the British into isolation.

But such observers should be careful about rushing into any over-hasty conclusions. They should remember that a number of other member-states share an attitude towards the EU rather closer to that of the UK than Germany or France. The Czech Republic, for instance:

iDnes: Klaus a Telička schvalují rozvážnost v Bruselu, ČSSD varuje před izolací: Prezident Václav Klaus označil … http://t.co/Qh043Qmm

December 9, 2011 2:55 pm via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@Zpravy

Zpravy

That link leads to an article from the leading Czech daily Mladá fronta dnes, with at its head a picture of Czech President Václav Klaus at the podium, with to the side a copy of the book he just had published, entitled European integration without illusions. Clearly, he is delighted to stand on the British side of the current Brussels developments. The article notes it is only the ČSSD – the main party now in opposition – that is worried about the Czech Republic isolating itself with this stance within the EU.

And there is also Denmark, with an even stronger history of setting definite limits to the sovereignty its government is willing to give up to the EU. As an article in the Kristeligt Dagblad notes, the new Danish PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt needs to be careful to avoid a hostile homecoming from this summit by not giving much away. The unicameral parliament there – the Folketing – is very much divided about what is going on now in Brussels. Many of its constituent parties intend to demand a referendum if there is any significant change to Denmark’s position with the EU promised there.

Perhaps the best conclusion to draw is that Cameron – with his protuberant finger – simply was best-prepared (by temperament perhaps, but also by the very nature of the UK political system) to resist these German/French proposals which after all had been telegraphed well in advance. Several other countries might be alleging a need to return back to their countries to “consult” before they can really make up their mind, but the sort of decisions that will be made back there are in many cases already quite evident, and will ultimately not support any theme of British isolation.

UPDATE: What’d I say?

EU treaty problems? Cameron is not alone. http://t.co/JEjsgdAI

December 14, 2011 12:52 pm via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@ftbrusselsblog

FT’s Brussels blog

Click through to access an excellent article from the FT’s Brussels Blog showing that the latest EU treaty agreed to “26-to-1″ at that last summit faces real problems not just in the UK, but in other EU member-states as well – Czech Republic and Denmark, yes, but also others.

                          

Definition of “crisis”: when officials need to huddle up on a weekend before Asia opening to take decisions & do statements a turmoil rages

August 6, 2011 1:43 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Nouriel

Nouriel Roubini

The Czech daily Mladá fronta dnes, as caught by the @Zpravy Twitter-feed, has the details on this particular edition:

iDnes: Lídři EU chtějí rychle realizovat závěry summitu. Uklidní tak trhy: Vlády musí urychleně dokončit dohody … http://bit.ly/oLaqvt

August 6, 2011 11:30 am via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@Zpravy

Zpravy

Turns out, if you like, that you can blame everything on European vacation syndrome (e.g. “No one touches my August holiday!”): EU leaders want to quickly carry out changes from summit, that way they’ll calm markets is the headline here.

• “Summit”? That’s the one they just had, of course, an extraordinary convening in Brussels on July 21 in reaction to the Italy/Spain funding troubles.
  
• “Changes”? That has to do with the European Financia Stability Facility (EFSF), which leaders at that summit agreed would be beefed up to better be able to intervene to assist eurozone member-states in financial need, eventually even becoming a sort of European Monetary Fund.

The result according to the Czech paper has been a recent series of extraordinary conference-calls, at one point simultaneously featuring German Chancellor Merkel, French President Sarkozy, Spanish premier Zapatero, Italian premier Berlusconi, and British PM David Cameron all on the line, with US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also allowed to listen in. Afterwards, it is reported here, they all called President Obama for good measure.

We’ll see what they came up with from any official announcements during the rest of this weekend, and then of course get market reaction starting from the Asian opening late Sunday night/early Monday morning (European time). But one thing these conversations are said to have produced was a pledge by Berlusconi to balance the Italian budget a year ahead of schedule, in 2013, and even to put a balanced budget amendent into the Italian constitution. (At least that is how I interpret the key phrase here ústavního dodatku, although ústavní can mean merely “institutional” in addition to “constitutional.”) If such an ironclad balanced-budget imperative would be a foolish move for the US – which everyone agrees it would be – how can it make any more sense for Italy?

                          

Police having a hard time loading pistols, are sharing out last supplies
The police are struggling with a shortage of 9mm ammunition, which is fired by the service-pistols of practically every officer of the law. Police commanders assert that a disturbance in the procurement procedure is at fault and that they’re already preparing a new one. Meanwhile well-supplied police agents are sharing with those having trouble with their supplies.

So go ahead, head on over there, find some outlet ready to sell/rent you some firearms (harder than in the US, but by no means impossible), and go to town: you’ll surely out-gun the local authorities. Especially after you realize, along with me, that that picture of a well-filled box of ammo at the top of the on-line article indicates no relief: those are military rifle-grade rounds, not pistol ammunition.

                          

Of particular interest in that program was the interview it included with former Polish general Czesław Kiszczak, who headed the Interior Ministry of that then-Communist country from 1981 through 1989 – thus for the entire period of martial law that was initiated in mid-December 1981 in response to the growth in popularity of the Solidarity movement. General Kiszczak was willing to openly admit that Communist Poland provided shelter and weapons to Palestinian terrorists on the lam during the 1970s and 1980s, including to Abu Nidal, head of the Black September group which was responsible for the hostage-taking and massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 summer Olympic games in Munich, among other incidents. “We closed our eyes to the fact that they came to Poland to recuperate and equip themselves for further terrorist actions,” Kiszczak admitted. Poland was also quite willing to help with such preparations by selling these militants as many weapons as they wanted. Abu Nidal was even allowed to run a business in Poland – known by the name or abbreviation “SAS” according to the MFD account – for a while in the 1980s.

Former Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski (thus Kiszczak’s colleague and immediate superior) was also interviewed for the program, according to De Standaard’s account. He could not recall anything of the sort happening.

                          

(Absalon – pictured here, photocredit to Uncle Buddha on Flickr – was the “fighting archbishop” of the Danish Middle Ages, who did much to build up Copenhagen towards the city it was to become by building a fort there. His statue is there in the city’s center, mounted on a magnificent rearing horse, in Højbroplads – that’s the square right by the Folketing, Denmark’s one-chamber parliament. The main sort of enemy he fought in his day, it turns out, was in fact Baltic Sea pirates.)

It’s no surprise that the Absalon has already seen some action, and the Danish press is following along to report.

First there was an engagement last weekend with an Indian ship, a “cargo-dhow,” covered in the Jyllands-Posten by an article from Ritzau. There was a problem with that ship: it had already been taken over by a band of pirates for use as a “mother ship” supporting smaller pirate-skiffs, with its regular 12-man crew confined away somewhere on board. That meant that the Danes really didn’t want to actually attack it, and so risk the crew’s lives; the Absalon instead just shadowed the ship for three days, warning other ships away and so preventing it from committing any actual piracy. The dhow finally headed back to the Somali coast – slipping away from the Danes’ observation for a while, it must be said – before it was rediscovered on that coast with the pirates gone and the original crew unharmed and only needing some fuel and food supplies to continue their journey.

You could call that one a stand-off, then. Admiral Rune and his men did somewhat better on Thursday. Among others, Marianne Fajstrup of Berlingske Tidende reports that the Absalon then got a distress-call from a Slovenian-owned, Antigua and Barbuda-registered ship called the Ariella, 35 nautical miles away, that pirates were attacking. The Danish warship promptly set sail in that direction, and also sent out a helicopter, which saw absolutely no one on the ship’s bridge but did find a pirate-skiff moored alongside, with pirates on it, which were driven away by gunfire. When the Absalon itself arrived, Danish sailors boarded the Ariella and ultimately found the ship’s crew barricaded away in a “safe room,” wondering whether it was safe to come out again and take back control of the ship.

There is parallel coverage of this incident from Rikke Faurfelt of Politiken, who adds an interesting wrinkle. Yes, pirates were driven away from the Ariella in their skiff, but there’s no guarantee that that was all of them. Some might still be aboard – and, at 183 meters long and 32,000 tons, the Ariella has plenty of space that needs to be searched before the “All clear” can be given. Interestingly, there is also coverage of this very same incident in the press of the landlocked Czech Republic, from Mladá fronta dnes (Somali pirates strike again, commandos from warship liberate crew), which adds the detail that there was a second pirate-skiff involved in the attack on the Ariella which managed to leave before the Danes could get there but was apprehended by a Russian warhead operating in the area on the same anti-pirate mission, the Neustrashimy (the “Fearless”; note that Admiral Rune cannot tell this Russian warship what to do, since it is not NATO).

                          

Just months after rushing to order enough swine-flu vaccine to protect their citizens, European governments are canceling orders and trying to sell or give away extra doses as they sit on a glut of the vaccine.

The main reason: European health officials decided that only one shot per person was needed, instead of the two originally planned.

Actually, there may have been another reason, as announced in the headline of the Czech Republic’s largest-circulation mainstream paper Mladá fronta dnes: Expert: Swine flu pandemic is a swindle by the pharmaceutical companies.

That’s right, it is alleged their profits were not all that they should be, so the drug companies manufactured a crisis to pump up sales revenue by at least millions. But who is the “expert” making this claim? His name is Wolfgang Wodarg, and he is chairman of the Health Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. (Note: that has no direct connection to the European Union, it’s a completely separate – in fact, earlier – organization. I know, it’s confusing . . .) And it seems that that Parliamentary Assembly will debate this question later this month, so maybe we’ll hear more about it then and become better able to judge.

Fortunately, the MFD article cited another piece giving all the details in the UK’s Daily Mail, so you can read about them there. But it also links to an article it published itself (i.e. in the Czech paper MFD) last July, about how the prominent Czech politician (and former Minister for Health) David Rath was also of the opinion that swine flu was just some sort of fraud for the benefit of the drug companies.

UPDATE: And indeed, French president Sarkozy’s house-newspaper Le Figaro is now announcing that the swine-flu epidemic there (known as “H1N1″) is over, according to an organization of French doctors called Réseau [i.e. network] Sentinelles France. At the same time, the article’s author (mysteriously known only as “C.J.”) says that it’s still recommended that one get immunized – the disease “could know a rebound.”

                          

Naturally, both Czech papers ultimately refer back to the Saudi press for coverage of this marquee event, but have to report that no Saudi paper was actually able to state what it was about Ms. Mulla* that catapulted her to victory. It was easier just to report what she won: an amount in riyals that, from the Czech-crown equivalent that is cited, seems to be just under €1,000; a pearl necklace; some diamonds (mounted on what, is not revealed); a wristwatch; and a paid vacation to Malaysia, which, although of course another Islamic land, is a pretty nice place to visit, I’ve heard. There’s also further detail here on one of the event’s key competitions, the “How much do you respect your mother?” event: apparently contestants each spend an entire day out “in the country” with their own mother, under the observation of one of the jury-members (wielding a clipboard, no doubt). I say, get coverage of that on the X-Games channel, pronto!

The Czech papers are able to contribute some added detail, perhaps somewhat wistfully, about another beauty pageant held in the Arab world that does actually conform a bit more tightly to what most of the rest of the world understands by the concept, namely the one for Miss Lebanon, where the girls do actually appear in swimsuits (one-piece only, though) and in evening gowns, and are interviewed in front of an audience. In contrast, returning again to Saudi Arabia, the LN article states “Beauty competitions there only have to do with goats, sheep, camels, and other animals” – despite the considerable effort required each year to get the camels into their one-piece bathing-suits!

[Cymbal crash] No, that last part I made up myself . . .

*Quite a suitable name, eh? No, I’m not making it up, click through above to the articles and see for yourself if you want. But don’t be fooled when you see the winner’s last name as “Mullaová”: that last “-ová” part is added routinely in Czech, Slovak, and some other Slavic languages to women’s last names.

                          

Yes, it’s the story of that wild-and-crazy guy-and-gal from Gotham who recently set a mark of some sort by becoming the first (known) pair in history to marry in zero-gravity. They achieved this by arranging for the ceremony to go down (so to speak) in the 27-meter cargo-cabin of “G-Force One,” the Boeing 727-200 owned by a company that enables people to experience weightlessness – for more-extended periods than, say, on a roller-coaster – by constantly diving while in flight. Apparently the bride, one Erin Finnegan (“Erin Finneganová” in Czech) had been to too many boring weddings and so let her imagination take flight when it came to contemplating the details of her own.

Naturally, it’s not like MFD got any sort of scoop here; a wacky human-interest story like this one is sure to get its share of English-language press-coverage as well, as the wedding ceremony duly did in other places like the New York Daily News, the Telegraph (UK), and the Daily Mirror (also UK). But comparing the coverage, I’d have to say that the (unattributed) Czech reporter/rewrite-man did a very good job indeed. Regarding that “Pow to the Nose!” (Bum do nosu! in Czech) from the title, for example, the MFD article (only) quotes Finneganová about the climactic kiss at the ceremony’s end as follows: “Noah rather socked me on the nose. I thought I was going to bleed.” It also exclusively adds the interesting detail that the bride relied, not on heavy hairspray, but actually on wires for her coiffure to keep it well-behaved during the ceremony’s twists and turns. (Props to the Telegraph, though, for this vital detail: “His wife [i.e. Finneganová] wore a designer wedding dress with trousers to protect her modesty during weightlessness.” I was wondering about that.)

Oh, and MFD has three excellent photos of the ceremony on the article’s webpage itself, accompanied by this excellent supplementary photo-series.

                          

OK, maybe the local Czech press is overstating somewhat the general interest in what the Senate has before it (although the Czech Senate Press Office does report the presence today of seventy journalists and eleven foreign film-crews, including one even from Hong Kong.) Still, the fact remains that, three months after the lower house of the Czech parliament approved the Lisbon Treaty, today the vote is to be held to see whether the upper house does the same (which is required, of course, along with the presidential signature, for the Czech Republic formally to approve it).

You really have to wonder: why is the vote being brought up just now? You see, there’s a knotty problem for any vote, which is namely that for a foreign treaty like this to pass it needs to win at least a 3/5 vote of all Senators present and voting. But precisely when a vote is scheduled for any measure before the Czech parliament is presumably up to those heading the current government, mainly the prime minster, So we have an important clue in the fact that in a few days the current prime minister, Mirek Topolánek (having lost a vote-of-confidence in the lower house a little over a month ago) is going to have to make way for Jan Fischer, who is supposed to be a non-political technocrat but who many fear will merely be a political puppet of Czech President Václav Klaus.

I think that pretty much explains the timing, then: while Topolánek may not have considered this to be the ideal time to bring up the Lisbon Treaty in the Senate, it was at least better than anytime after he had to leave office, when there could be no assurance that it ever would be brought up at all. Of course, the outgoing prime minister was also on-hand to urge its acceptance before the Senators, as recounted in a further article from LN with an arresting title: Stop any further shame, Topolánek lobbies. “Shame”? Certainly: Topolánek’s point was how doubly-embarrassing it would be for the Czech Republic to reject the Lisbon Treaty not so long after voting out its government just as it was in the middle of the country’s first opportunity to serve as the six-month EU president. He termed that last action an “irresponsible and cynical step,” and as its main victim he would, but his main point was a good one nonetheless. A “no” vote would consign the country to the EU’s “periphery,” he claimed before the assembled Senate; what’s more, “it would threaten all lands to the east of Germany and Austria with a weakening of their ties to the West and move them into the arms of the Russians.”

While that last point is debatable, it’s still true that rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Senate would unleash a whole new set of problems for the EU (while at least rendering irrelevant – for a while, at least – the issue of when and how to hold a second referendum in Ireland about it). If the past is any guide, the immediate issue then would become how to maneuver so as to get the Senate to vote on the treaty again sometime in the future and, this time, to return the “correct” answer. While on the one hand such a process would seem to be a bit easier and less-ostentatious than repeating a whole referendum (the remedy for the previous Irish “no”), on the other hand it would still be very difficult to pull off against the Euro-sceptic resistance to be found throughout the Czech government, including most especially in the president’s office.

In any case, Topolánek’s main point is certainly valid: the Czech Republic would suffer a big blow to its European reputation. This point is reinforced by another LN piece (sourced to the Czech press agency ČTK): They say the Czech presidency could have been worse. The point of this article is, on the occasion of the last legislative session of the European Parliament in its current form (i.e. before elections coming up on June 4), to go around and ask MEPs what they think of the Czech presidency so far. The bottom-line is that no one is yet ready to provide a firm answer; the general attitude is “Let’s see them finally ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and then we’ll see what we think about them.”

Ratify it is what they’re going to do, though, at least according to Josef Kolina in his article The Czechs are fans of “Lisbon,” but they aren’t familiar with it, who cites a insta-poll carried out over the past couple of days that cites 51.2% of respondents for the Lisbon Treaty and only 29.2% against. So that means the Senate should accept it, right? is what Kolina seems to be saying, even as that poll further reveals – and it’s no big surprise – how lacking the Czech man-on-the-street is in familiarity with the changes that treaty will bring about.

Rate Yourself: Lisbon-Fan or No?

I know: that’s a rather naive attitude. But one of LN’s competitors in the market for Czech daily newspapers, Mladá fronta dnes, comes out seemingly in answer to Kolina’s concerns with a helpful and informative article, by one Zuzana Kaiserová: Fill out the quiz: Are you a fan of Lisbon, yes or no? It’s not really a “quiz” as you probably think of the word, i.e. it’s not some sort of test to see how much you know about the Lisbon Treaty, but is rather a self-evaluation questionnaire – you know, along the lines of “Are you really good in bed?” and other such articles you see all the time in women’s magazines – that is supposed to help you decide in the end whether you are “pro” or “contra.” Of course, these things can never truly be as non-partisan as their authors claim them to be; it generally does not take too much ingenuity in slanting the questions to ensure that the reader comes up most of the time with the answer that you prefer.

Looking at the questions making up this “quiz,” I’d have to think that Kaiserová is not a fan of Lisbon. Like, for example: “Does it bother you that [the Treaty] will weaken the role of the Czech Republic?” Or: “Do you want one more – European – president?” Or this: “Would it bother you if the Czech Republic no longer had Vladimír Špidla in the European Commission?” (I guess there the answer would depend on your opinion of Vladimír Špidla; he was Czech prime minister earlier in this decade, and is now European commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs & Equal Opportunities.)

UPDATE: There’s one more EU crisis avoided: the Czech Senate did pass the Lisbon Treaty.

                          

An article in the largest-circulation quality Czech daily, Mladá fronta dnes (I patted Obama on the head. He hugged me.), has the details about this character, as well as a couple of pictures of the incident in question so you can decide just how outraged you’d care to be. That guy’s name is Jaroslav Suchý (a fairly common Czech last-name; it means “dry”), and he’s no stranger to the Czech security service. But hold on, it’s not what you think: as the head of that organization, Lubomír Kvíčala, told MFD:

That person who lightly touched the president on his hair I know. We already encountered him a couple of times at previous visits of the American president Bush and at a visit by Mrs. [Condoleezzaa] Rice. He is just enthusiastic about such visits and loves them. He’s definitely not dangerous.

According to Suchý himself, he was waiting at the checkpoint offering access to Castle Square from midnight Saturday, i.e. seven hours before the gates were opened for the public, and other on-the-scene MFD reporters confirm that he was among the first to be admitted by police, which enabled him to rush up to grab a prime position up front (into what generally would be termed the “mosh pit” in a rock-concert context – here, it turned into the “press-the-flesh zone”). As one such reporter states, “[f]or a whole three hours he loudly let people in his vicinity know how he was looking forward to the speech.” And Suchý himself also told MFD that “although I don’t really speak English, I clapped at every one of Obama’s sentences. Despite the fact that I was mainly looking at the president rather than the [translated] sub-titles.”

The article goes on to note that, when Jaroslav Suchý is not tracking down and applauding high-ranking American officials, he is pursuing a case in the Czech courts seeking compensation for being forced to attend “special schools” (i.e. schools for the handicapped), which he claims he was forced into solely because of the color of his skin. Perhaps some of you, examining the article’s photos again, may think this is some sort of joke, but it likely is not: the Czech Republic does still have an ethnic-discrimination problem, although it is not directed against black people (who are exceedinly rare) but against the Romany, or “gypsies.” So apparently the authorities where Suchý grew up kept classifying him as a gypsy.