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.

                          

Inevitably, there remain many within the boundaries of the EU who go beyond mere disappointment to an outright rejection of that process that began at Laeken (that’s in Belgium, by the way) and ended up, through many twists and turns that included a rejected EU Constitution, with the Lisbon Treaty. Most prominent in this regard are the Czechs, if only because Czech president Václav Klaus was the last obstacle to the ratification of that treaty, holding out until only one month ago. Klaus was finally forced to knuckle under, but Czech anti-Lisbon opinion will not let this day pass without at least one more loud cry of protest. Thus it is that we get this article in today’s on-line edition of the Czech daily Lidové noviny. (Those signs brandished in the photo up top read “We want a Europe of free nations” and “We don’t want EU vetoes/prohibitions”; and the Czech word “dost” that’s also there simply means “enough.”)

That this sort of piece should appear on lidovky.cz is no surprise, since that newspaper – otherwise quite a mainline Czech broadsheet worth recommending, by the way – has through the years consistently provided a platform for the writings of Václav Klaus, whether in or out of power. This time it’s not Klaus himself who wrote the article – he’s still president, after all, so that would truly be rather too awkward – but instead one Michal Petřík, an advisor to President Klaus.

Petřík spends about the last third of his piece delivering rather thick Czech legal prose seemingly designed to prove either that the country’s supreme court was wrong to dismiss a last-minute appeal to it that the Lisbon Treaty is incompatible with the Czech Republic’s constitution, or that the final concessions granted to the Czechs to get them finally to sign (involving certain derogations from the EU’s Document of Fundamental Rights) were actually not forthcoming – or both, it’s hard to make out. But many of his points from the first part of the article are actually relevant and well-taken.

Complaints against the Lisbon Treaty? Anyone who has been paying attention at all over the past eight years, whether they are otherwise for the Treaty or against, can surely come up with a few. Yes, when the ratification process for the EU Constitution hit a dead end with its rejection in the French in Dutch referenda of mid-2005, what ultimately happened was that most of its provisions were simply re-packaged in a “treaty” form that would have a lower threshold for ratification. And yes, where that subsequent threshold still required a national referendum and that referendum result turned out to be “No” (as in Ireland), those same electors were inevitably offered another chance to vote “correctly.”

Petřík does deal here with that first point (although, surprisingly, not with the second), but he also reminds us of other objections:

• That Laeken Declaration that started things rolling: it didn’t call for any new constitution! It simply called for a convention of prominent European politicians and thinkers to get together to think up ways to improve the EU’s functioning, transparency, and degree of democracy. But this initially rather unambitious and limited aim was obviously hijacked into becoming something quite a bit more.
  
  
• Something I had forgotten: the new EU members – i.e. the ten who joined in 2004 and then the additional two in 2007 – really never had any true input on the constitutional process whose result they were later going to be asked to adhere to. That is mainly because they were not yet actual member-states when most of the content of the EU Constitution was being hammered out, generally at that constitutional convention that did get up and running. (They were only permitted to send rather powerless observers to it, whose role was to listen rather than do any talking.)
  
  So what? you may ask. Well, it should follow that, with the derailment of the EU Constitution process in the wake of the French and Dutch referenda, those new member-states should have regained the full opportunity to judge for themselves the proposed Union re-structuring as the process dragged on – yes, even to object to it if they did not like what they saw, even to dare to be the one state that refused to ratify (as in the Czech Republic) and so that would sink the process the second time around. Instead, the propaganda-line was developed that all the 25 governments making up the EU (at the time) were in favor of pushing through the proposed changes, that the only things in the way were the somewhat misguided French and Dutch electorates. And those changes were pushed through . . .
  
  
• . . . despite the “period of reflection” announced by EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso after the French and Dutch referenda defeats to give an impression of EU officials’ new chastened willingness to listen to the concerns of ordinary citizens. In actuality, that time involved rather little “reflection,” but instead fevered thinking about what new path to take to finally successfully attain the desired end-state of having those constitutional changes implemented. That path, as we know, involved relabeling the body of those changes as just a “treaty,” rather than a “constitution.” But it also involved the calculated waiting for a suitably strong and motivated EU presidency to come along to pick up the ball and get things moving again, in what turned out to be the form of the German EU presidency of the first half of 2007, which at the end of its term ensured the adoption of a “mandate” for an intergovernmental conference to meet during the next presidential term, held by Portugal, and launch the new “treaty” on its way. That duly occurred, at the routine end-of-presidency EU summit held by the Portuguese government on 13 December 2007 at Lisbon.

To summarize Petřík’s message: If you had a sneaking suspicion that the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty over the past couple of years has been subject to a bit of official EU manipulation to ensure that it succeeds, well, you really don’t know the half of it! And, although they do smack of “sour grapes” from those who tried to fight and keep the Treaty from ever being implemented at all, these arguments are still worth recalling even on the very day, today, that it does come into force. They don’t make a pretty picture.

Maybe the most that can be said in response by someone (such as this blogger) who believes that the Lisbon Treaty changes were needed for the EU to be able to function reasonably well in a challenging world, trying to blend the interests of 27 member-states, is that the US Constitutional Convention, back in 1787, also went far beyond its initial mandate, which was only to revise and improve the Articles of Confederation in effect as the law of the land in the newly-independent United States of that time. Given the more-primitive public communications means of that day, it could even be asserted as well that that Constitution was hardly ratified by the fully-informed consent of the citizens in whose name those at the Convention – and then those at the individual state ratifying conventions – claimed to be acting. What is more, that Constitution had a number of serious flaws, such as the sanction it gave to slavery and its lack of clarity over whether a state could secede, that would only be settled later by the outpouring of copious amounts of blood. (Indeed, it may even have various serious flaws today, such as the notion of the Senate filibuster – but that’s certainly a discussion for another time.) That de facto EU Constitution going into effect today no doubt has quite a few serious flaws as well – how will they be corrected?

                          

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.

                          

And no Nicolas Sarkozy. What vital functions did he have on his official schedule yesterday, when that Prague “summit” was wound up and the Eastern Partnership agreement signed without his participation? Vincent Jauvert of the Nouvel Observateur gives us the details: merely officially taking delivery of a government report on diversity and attending a ceremony in honor of police killed-on-duty. Worthy affairs both, I suppose, especially the latter, but presumably also nothing that could not have been re-scheduled.

No, it’s plain that the French president had not the least intention of being there in Prague for the Eastern Partnership summit. And Jauvert helpfully supplies his list of five reasons for that:

1. Sarkozy already has his very own EU-sponsored outreach program to nations just outside European borders. It’s called the “Union for the Mediterranean,” it was launched about a year ago, and it’s largely Sarkozy’s (or rather France’s) own baby, although it’s headquartered in Barcelona. It’s quite understandable how unenthusiastic he would be for yet another initiative of this type that can only divert money and attention from his own.
   
   By the way, Jauvert cites this as also being the reason why the Italian and Spanish heads of government failed to show up in Prague. I rather think that the jury is still out on that; Berlusconi, for example, justified his absence by invoking his new divorce problems, and that could even be true!
   
2. Sarkozy and the Czech government don’t get along very well. This is clear. There were those quite explicity-stated doubts by French officials, faced with having to give up the EU presidency at the end of last year, as to whether the Czechs would be able to handle the task of taking over. (And were they, in the end?) There was that dispute about the French government allegedly urging French car companies to repatriate their manufacturing jobs from their factories in Eastern Europe – most prominently from the Czech Republic.
   
3. Sarkozy does get along rather well with the Russians. And of course the Russians don’t like this Eastern Partnership idea at all.
   
4. Sarkozy does not want any more EU enlargement – and participation at this summit could very well be falsely interpreted that he has softened that stand. (Think of the inevitable photo-ops that there would be, with him there having to smile for the cameras, like one big happy family, along with all those ex-Soviet country leaders.)
   
5. This blasted Eastern Partnership is going to gobble up €600 million in EU funds! (That’s just what has already been budgeted – more is sure to be spent in the future!) Another reason for Sarkozy to refuse to have anything to do with it publicly.

This is all very valuable analysis. As for myself, though, I still prefer my original reason why the summit flopped, namely that by that point no one could take the Czech presidency at all seriously anymore. Take a closer look: that Thursday and Friday when the summit took place was actually the very period of the transition from the Topolánek to the Fischer Czech governments! It was the period of maximum confusion, of maximum lack of preparedness by most Czech officials as that brand-new government’s personnel were busy in the first place simply finding and settling themselves into their new offices!

How could the Czechs ever have explicitly and deliberately scheduled such a summit for precisely such a period? “Because they are idiots?” you might suggest. No, the Czechs are certainly not idiots, let’s have none of that; the idea rather was that the summit would have to be run by that part of the government not in transition – i.e. by the office of the president, namely Václav Klaus. Yes, he was in charge at that summit, and not only that but everyone realized ahead of time that he would have to be. And Václav Klaus is a quite unpopular figure in most European Union circles, not only because of his often-rabid anti-EU views (e.g. he has been hinting that he won’t sign the Czech ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, even though that has now been passed by both houses of parliament), but also, unfortunately, because of his prickly and know-it-all personality. Why travel to Prague to have to put up with that? After all (as I reported previously in this space) Barack Obama might have had to travel to Prague about a month ago, but he made sure ahead of time that he wouldn’t have to put up with Klaus.

One final note: there was also a missing head of government on the side of those “Eastern” states for whose benefit this summit was organized, namely Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. But that should have been no surprise to even short-term readers of this weblog; as “Europe’s last dictator” it was remarkable that he was invited in the first place, and I also reported in this space how he was assured of a rather cold reception if he did come, which apparently convinced him that it was better not to head off to Prague in the first place.

CORRECTION: I have been informed that, in fact, the Polish head of government – premier Donald Tusk – was present in Prague for the Eastern Partnership summit. This makes perfect sense since, as I mention, it was all originally a Polish initiative.

                          

Keep in mind that this “Eastern Partnership” summit actual takes place just before Mirek Topolánek’s government heads out the door and is replaced by a government of technocrats headed by current chief of the Czech Statistical Agency, Jan Fischer. Yet even if Topolánek had any objection to this treatment of the guest from Belarus – there’s no indication either way whether he does – his extreme “lame duck” status would provide him little standing to do anything about it. Besides, no matter who is in charge of the agenda of a summit occurring in Prague, it’s at least always up to the Czech president who he invites to come dine at the Castle.

Plus, it just so happens that this is the right thing to do. Lukashenko has long been known as “Europe’s last remaining dictator” for the ruthless way he manipulates the sham elections he is called upon to stage every so often and persecutes the native political opposition. One complaint against the EU from many who are not privileged to walk the governing halls in Brussels is the way, when some international actor does something nasty which should make him persona non grata, it seems that all that it takes is a certain period of lying low and avoiding any more nasty headlines to get back into the EU’s good graces again. Here Václav Klaus is demonstrating that, despite his somewhat advanced age, there is nothing wrong with his memory or political sense on this issue.

                          

The central fact in all of this is that the Czech constitution simply does not specify who should be in charge – i.e. the president or the prime minister – when the Czech Republic has to handle the EU presidency, and of course this is the first time that country has been called upon to do so. (Considering how things are turning out, the EU might be tempted to find some way also to make it the last time, whether that’s through the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty or some other measure.) So far the going assumption was that that was the prime minister, provided that he headed a government that had the confidence of the legislature. That is no longer the case, although Topolánek is at least still around, simply because he has not yet been replaced, to try to run things even in his weakened political state.

But that will cease to be true around the end of the first week of May, Nosálková and Pospĕchová report, which is when planning calls for Fischer to be sworn in as Czech prime minister (if the required political support – meaning a vote of approval by the lower house of the legislature – is forthcoming). Handily, Fischer himself already shows clear signs of hardly being so ready to oppose President Klaus’ ambitions to take charge of EU policy at that point; as he stated to the HN reporters “It’s not yet agreed who will carry out the function of EU president. But there’s a first time for everything.”

Clearly, then, that end-of-first-week-of-May point might very well mark an important watershed between a period in which Klaus has great but not exclusive influence on Czech policy towards the EU (i.e. he still has to struggle against the politically-discredited but still-in-office Topolánek regime) and a period until the end of the Czech presidency at the end of June when he has untrammeled control. The HN reports lay out a handy scheme of the upcoming important EU events occuring in each of those periods:

During Topolánek

• Ecofin meeting (i.e. meeting of the EU member-state finance ministers)
  
• EU-Canada summit
  
• Summit to found the EU’s so-called “Eastern Partnership” with six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldava, and the Ukraine. The purpose of this “partnership” is to offer support to the development of democracy and free-market economies in these countries – that is, as Nosálková and Pospĕchová rightly point out, to counteract Russian influence in them.
  
• Adjournment of the European Parliament, preliminary to the MEP elections coming up in June.
  

• EU-Russia summit (quite curious, this, coming after that previous “Eastern Partnership” founding summit)
  
• EU-China summit, to actually take place in Prague
  
• A European Council (i.e. summit of all EU heads-of-government), whose main task is supposed to be agreeing with the Irish on the date and the practicalities about having a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (you’ll recall that the Irish gave the “wrong” answer by rejecting the Treaty in a June 2008 referendum; now they are to be given another chance to give the “right” answer)
  
• Various yet-to-be-confirmed summits: EU-South Korea, EU-Pakistan, even possibly another EU-USA summit

The important list, of course, is the second one, namely of important EU events which, as things stand, look like they will be chaired and run by the Czech president, who makes no secret of his disdain for the EU. But Klaus reserves his contempt in particular for the Lisbon Treaty, which he has stated he will only sign if both houses of the Czech parliament ratify it (only the lower has done so far) and the Irish have ratified it already.

Imagine, then, next June’s important European Council meeting, charged with arranging the second Irish referendum, run by a figure who has a publicly-stated conviction against any Lisbon Treaty ratification, meaning against any second Irish referendum! Already many top EU officials can see that particular disaster coming down the road and are trying to come up with ways to avoid it. As Nosálková and Pospĕchová report, there is a plan taking shape to gut that June European Council meeting of any real significance – to make it merely naoko, or “for show” – and schedule the serious European Council for the following month, by which time Sweden will have taken over the EU presidency and serious work can resume.

Clearly they’re getting desperate with this – imagine holding that European Council in June with everybody knowing that it’s just a sham, something that has to be scheduled and run because it is on the calendar, but with at the same time a conscious attempt not to allow it to do any useful work, because of the objectionable nature of the meeting’s chairman! But that’s the solution that seems to be taking shape, if we go by this HN reporting (and I’ve also seen it mentioned elsewhere).

I think this might be the point to bring into the discussion an article/interview I came upon a few weeks ago (h/t to the new blog Poland in the EU) which advances the possibility that, somehow, Czech President Václav Klaus is actually some sort of Russian tool. As incredible as it may seem, when you think about how the 67-year-old Klaus lived most his life in a country under Soviet domination and then occupation, it is not inconceivable that at some point the Russians got ahold of some seriously embarrassing or incriminating material that enabled them to manipulate him. (See that interview for further bits of evidence that Klaus has been extremely friendly to the Russians as president.) Whatever is the case, for anyone who believes in the EU the frantic contortions it seems like it will have to put itself through to rid itself of the baleful effects of this pest are sad to see.

                          

OK, so Bilefsky has his NYT account. (And what luck that he ran across one “Martin Kotas” – last name probably really spelled “Kotaš” – who provided so many pungent opinions about the Americans and enabled him to use the phrase “literally cried into his beer”! But I would counsel Bilefsky to avoid the cheap-but-tempting one-person anecdote in favor of consulting, say, the many polls available that can clearly show how attitudes in this country of 10 million people are against the installation of American radar on its soil, rather than regarding it – as Kotaš seems to – as some “essential bulwark against Russia.”) But the leading Czech business newspaper Hospodářské noviny already had a piece yesterday (Obama cuts consultations with Czechs to a minimum) about Obama’s Prague dilemma, which of course provides further details – like that the EU initially was fighting hard to stage this US-EU summit back in Brussels rather than in Prague. EU leaders don’t like President Klaus much and had no desire to reward him with this summit, but in the end it seems Prague’s sheer “picturesqueness” factor won out. (E.g. fantastic scenery – like Prague Castle, pictured above – in front of which to stage events like a major public speech. And remember that, until the events of this past week, there was no reason to regard Mirek Topolánek as the sort of “toxic” Czech leader that Obama would have to maneuver to avoid, as he always would have to do with regard to President Klaus.) And while there will be a busy schedule of bilateral meetings on Sunday for the American president, the one with Czech representatives will involve President Klaus, Premier Topolánek, and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg all at the same time yet last only a few minutes. Much more time has been put into the schedule for talks with EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and the leaders of Poland and Spain – as well as, at the end of Obama’s visit, with former Czech president Václav Havel, who nowadays fills no explicit official or political role and, indeed, has not been in the best of health.

“Undisclosed-Location Restaurant”? No Way

By the way, about that “secret location” for Barack and Obama’s romantic Prague dinner tonight? Remember that this is the Czech Republic and that Central Europe especially has always been a difficult region in which to keep secrets, from way back at the beginning of the Cold War and even before. The Czech daily Lidové noviny has all you might want to know about that romantic evening (Obamas’ dinner? No secret). The restaurant that won the prize of hosting the First Couple turns out to be Terasa U Zlaté Studně (“Terrace at the Golden Well”), rated by the English-language Prague city guide Prague.tv as an “Upscale restaurant, with excellent views” (indeed, see for yourself at their homepage), and located at the bottom of the massive Castle Hill where on Sunday morning Obama will deliver his speech to the gathered masses at the top. (Yes, a “Sermon on the Mount,” you could say.) As restaurant manager Michal Motyčka was glad to reveal to the inquiring LN reporter (and, no doubt, whomever else), “Yes, it’s confirmed. We have Obama and Michelle registered for dinner Saturday evening.” Interestingly, Motyčka went further: “The restaurant is not closed to the public. Obama will be there normally, with other people who come to eat with us that evening.” But don’t go rushing to make your own reservations: they’re already all booked-up. (This probably in itself provides a bit of further commentary on the “secrecy regime” in Prague.) Oh, and on the menu? It will be modern Czech cuisine, so such things as tenderloin and duck with sauerkraut.

* A better translation of Topolánek’s criticism of Obama is probably “highway to hell” – a remark apparently influenced by the Czech Prime Minister’s attendance at the AC/DC concert in Prague shortly before! I ran across this interesting tidbit while scrounging recently through the on-line Czech press, encountering it in someone’s editorial piece. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to go back and track it down to get the reference or the link, so for this I’ll just have to draw on whatever reserves of credibility I have on account with the honored readers of this site.

                          

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.

                          

Could this provide an opening for the EU to try to provide some helpful intervention of its own? Maybe one last hurrah for what has turned out to be an extraordinarily activist six-month EU presidency for France and her president, Nicolas Sarkozy? That is a tempting thought, except that Sarkozy, his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and various other family are currently on holiday in Brazil. (They had to fly there, where it’s warm at this time of year, for an official state visit, you see. It all amounts to little more than the sort of tacking-on-a-vacation-to-the-end-of-a-company-paid-business-trip in which I wager most of the readers of this weblog have indulged at least once.) Nonetheless, Thijs Bermand and Tineke Bennema of the Dutch daily Trouw offer the proposition that the EU does have a role that it can play by virtue of the Assocition Agreement with Israel that is still pending (EU can make a difference in MidEast conflict).

On its face, that idea does seem plausible, as this Association Agreement is something that you can imagine that Israel would be eager to have. Apart from its sheer symbolic value as a political endorsement, this Agreement would set in motion all sorts of EU-Israel consultation and cooperation in a wide array of fields such as economic matters, science, defense, and internal and external security. But the thing is, a number of EU officials are also well aware of the sort of endorsement it would confer on the Jewish state, so that its path to final approval has been tortuous and is still incomplete. As Bermand and Bennema report, originally one condition for its approval was that Israel submit a detailed and signed “concrete action-plan” towards the concluding of a peace between itself and the Palestinians. That requirement was subsequently watered-down enough to not be in way of the Agreement’s approval anymore, but the EU Parliament still voted to put it aside – and that was prior to the recent expiration of the Israeli-Hamas cease-fire in Gaza that set off all the violence. No, even before all of that enough parliamentarians were determined not to reward Israel in any way for such things as its illegal settlements in the West Bank and its disrespect for Palestinian human rights generally – including its two-years-and-counting blockade of the Gaza Strip – and held the treaty up. But then the EU Council (the body, or rather set of bodies, representing the individual EU member-states) made it clear that it intended to move the approval process forward nonetheless.

The Agreement’s exact status in light of those contrary developments is therefore unclear to all but experts in EU processes. Nevertheless, it is also clear that it is by no means ready yet for approval, yet that all that is missing is some sort of leadership to arise to coordinate the Union’s approach to the matter in such a way that the prospect of successfully concluding such an Agreement could be used as a powerful card to try to influence Israeli behavior – or so, at least, Berman and Bennema believe. The requirement for some sort of written peace plan for the Palestinians from Israel, after all, was originally part of what the EU was demanding. Admittedly, anyone at all familiar with the long-standing patterns of Israeli government treatment of such outside demands knows that that was ludicrous, and it was accordingly taken out of the picture, but in that same spirit there should still be some scope, in the right hands, for the EU to hold out the prospect of this Agreement to exert some (friendly) pressure on the Israelis. Yes, as the authors admit, trying to resuscitate the peace-process this way may amount to “crying in the desert,” but surely something, anything must be done to stop the horrific bloodshed now going on. It’s at least worth a try.

Structurally Simply Not in the Cards

Yes, I suppose any and everything is worth a try as far-too-many innocents are being killed and wounded, both Palestinian and Israeli. (The former, of course, far exceed the latter.) But the problems that stand in the way of any success at all seem insurmountable. I’ll just mention the complications introduced into the situation by the fact that, in effect, there is also a current political vacuum in Jerusalem, with Ehud Olmert only a caretaker (and, to a great extent, discredited) Israeli prime minister awaiting elections to choose his successor: I really don’t know enough about the Israeli political scene to be able to evaluate how that affects the situation (and remember, in addition, that Israeli policy might now well be in the grip of an irrational rage not amenable to any rational human intervention in the first place). On the other hand, there is also a certain political vacuum on the EU’s side, one that is in fact not just episodic but rather built into current EU structures. Put simply, with Sarkozy away on vacation until the New Year his services will no longer available to the EU, as another country takes over the presidency on 1 January, namely the Czech Republic. It is Václav Klaus who takes up the task then for pushing European interests in the outside world, and given his renegade views on the European Union it is fairly certain that the next six months will be more about containing the damage his nation’s presidency is liable to cause to EU structures rather than any sort of effective representation of EU interests to the outside world.

(As those ultra-familiar with the EU and its workings might object: There is always the EU commissioner for external relations – currently Benita Ferrero-Waldner, of Austria – available to act as the Union’s “super diplomat” this way, and/or the Council’s “High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy,” currently Spain’s Javier Solana. Yes, but these sorts of officials would just not have the same weight in negotiations with the Israelis, the Arab states, the Americans, etc. as an activist head-of-government EU president on the pattern of Nicolas Sarkozy – they are mere bureaucrats and would be regarded as such by the heads-of-government with which they would be asked to deal. No, it’s unfortunately still the case that the EU has to depend on “getting lucky” by having in place an appropriate president/prime minister – “appropriate” not only in attitude and ability to get things done, but also in terms of the reflected size and power of the country s/he comes from – to put out the international fires that flare up. The Lisbon Treaty, by the way, would quite likely solve this whole problem by creating, instead of the six-month revolving national presidencies, the office of an actual, long-standing EU president who would possess the required international prestige by virtue of having been specifically endorsed for the job by the EU Council and Parliament.)

Hezbollah Won’t Intervene

The best estimation for the chances of success of what Berman and Bennema propose, then, is “very small.” Such pessimistic conclusions are only reinforced by another article posted on Trouw at the same time: “Hezbollah cannot afford any attack”, credited only to the (Dutch) Novum news agency. The message here is what it says on the tin: the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, with whom Israel fought a rather messy war in July-August 2006, is really not in a position to react to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip with anything other than noisy demonstrations, according to comments from Hezbollah insiders. To be sure, this Shiite popular movement is viewed throughout the Arab world as Israel’s most redoubtable opponent and, interestingly, has its own arsenal of rockets of rather greater sophistication – and therefore ability to hit more of Israeli territory – than those currently being fired off by Hamas. But it seems that they don’t dare use them – because of how near-by UN and Lebanese army troops might react, because they cannot be sure that they would again have the support of any other substantial segment of Lebanese popular opinion (who, understandably, don’t want to call down on themselves what the Gazans are currently going through), and of course because of fear over how Israel would react. For if the Israeli have achieved nothing else over the past few days, they have at least made clear their willingness to respond with massive violence to such rocket attacks. And this consideration might be enough, up to this point at least, to make Israeli actions in Gaza a “success” for her despite the considerable anger they have provoked throughout much of the world.

                          

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.