EUROPEAN DIARY:There are fears the Eurosceptic Vaclav Klaus will now become the main powerbroker, writes JAMIE SMYTH
THERE WAS a sense of irony when one of Mirek Topolanek’s last acts as Czech prime minister and figurehead for his country’s six-month EU presidency last week was to chair a jobs summit.
But the 53-year-old chairman of the Czech Civic Democratic Party did not see the funny side of a reporter’s question on what advice the soon-to-be-redundant prime minister could offer millions of workers losing their jobs. “I will lose a job but not work because you will find work if you look for it, and that’s the advice for everybody else,” he said in a typically blunt response that may have been inspired by his admiration of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
The Czech government’s collapse, which most observers blame on Civic Democratic Party infighting stirred up by Eurosceptic president Vaclav Klaus, leaves a weak technical government led by civil servant Jan Fischer to close out the presidency.
For the EU, the changeover could not happen at a worse time, coming in the face of the worst economic crisis in 60 years and with the Lisbon Treaty still not implemented in all states.
But it also underscores the poor diplomatic skills shown by Topolanek over the past five months as EU president.
Right from the start, the Czech presidency offended some of its EU partners when it unveiled the Entropa sculpture by Czech artist David Cerny. The 16m x 16m satiric artwork, which was hung in the Council of Ministers building in Brussels, poked fun at EU stereotypes. Italy was represented by masturbating footballers while Bulgaria was a Turkish toilet. The Bulgarians did not get the joke and a diplomatic protest followed.
But Topolanek made a far more serious error when he warned in a speech to MEPs that US economic policies were a “road to hell”. He had been inspired by an Iron Maiden concert he had attended a week earlier, but his undiplomatic language did not do EU-US relations any good a week before the G20 met in London.
It was no surprise, therefore, when US president Barack Obama chose to spend the evening with his wife Michelle rather than shooting the breeze with Czech ministers on his official visit to the Czech Republic a week later. In a telling shot captured live on Czech TV, Topolanek and Klaus were left standing alone on the Prague airport runway as the presidential cavalcade sped into town following the briefest of handshakes with Obama.
Many of Europe’s most important leaders also snubbed Topolanek last week by failing to turn up at the Eastern Partnership summit. Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, Silvio Berlusconi and José Luis Zapatero all chose to stay at home rather than discuss the growing political and economic instability on Europe’s borders.
Sarkozy’s antipathy towards Topolanek is well known in EU circles. They clashed publicly when the French president said it was “irresponsible” for French car firms to manufacture cars in the Czech Republic. But even before the Czechs took over the EU presidency in January, French diplomats were privately calling into question their ability to run the EU – citing the failure to ratify Lisbon as a key example.
The “no shows” by the other leaders were probably motivated more by “summit fatigue” than by any particular problem with the Czechs. The Eastern Partnership summit was the third meeting of all 27 EU leaders within five months and came just a month before the regular June summit.
It also followed on from Sarkozy’s French presidency, which brought the art of “EU summitry” to new heights.
“If you combine the excessive assertiveness by Topolanek in the first months of the presidency when he issued several presidency statements reflecting the Czech government’s position, not the EU position, and the gap between ambition and results, it was a disappointment,” says Antonio Missiroli, director of the European Policy Centre, adding that there are fears among EU states about the last six weeks of the Czech EU presidency.
Even the Czech senate’s belated ratification of the Lisbon Treaty last week cannot resuscitate the presidency, which must still undertake important business, including negotiating the Irish legal guarantees before a second referendum on Lisbon in the autumn, and choosing a new European Commission president.
Few tears will be shed by EU leaders at Topolanek’s demise. But the great fear in Brussels is that Klaus will become the main powerbroker during the last six weeks of the presidency. Interim prime minister Fischer arrives in Brussels today to meet commission president José Manuel Barroso. The first question Fischer is likely to face is who will chair the June European Council: himself or Klaus?