The Czech Republic will hold the EU presidency in the first six months of next year. "When it comes to the faith-based project of European political integration, the Czech Republic is a dangerously heretical place.
This does not mean that the Czechs are hostile to the European Union though many in Brussels lazily put them high up in their lists of 'Eurosceptics'. Rather, the Czechs have a taste for something more subversive: the questioning of big planks of EU conventional wisdom," it adds. "This matters a lot right now. On January 1st the Czechs will take over the rotating presidency Steinmeier: Russia has "Crossed the Line" in Georgia ...
Most Czechs indifferent to Czech EU presidency - poll ... of the EU, chairing all meetings and setting the agenda for the following six months. The future of the Lisbon treaty is sure to come up on their watch, as the Irish government scrambles to find ways to overcome the no vote cast by its electorate last June. And in foreign policy, it is a safe bet that Russia will muscle its way up the EU's agenda in 2009," the Economist writes. "On both fronts, the Czechs are guilty of heterodoxy. British Conservatives like to claim the centre-right Civic Democrats, known by their Czech initials as the ODS, as their closest ideological allies in Europe. This is not strictly correct. The British Tories say they will try to scupper Lisbon if it is not in force by the time they come to power. In contrast, the ODS-led Czech government is committed to ratifying the text, probably by the end of the year," it adds. "That said, Czech ministers do not buy the French or German line that Lisbon is a vital treaty that will magically transform the union into a world power. Some big EU countries depict the loss of Lisbon as a catastrophe, comments the foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, but 'of course it is not.' Losing Lisbon would 'make life difficult,' he concedes, and would be hard to explain to voters after so many years of fuss. But the EU works with its current rules 'quite well', so the Irish vote is 'not the end of the world.' Some fervent Europeans want Ireland to be threatened with expulsion from the EU if they do not ratify Lisbon soon. A Czech presidency would not stand for such bullying," the Economist writes. "When it comes to Russia, the Czechs are heretics, too. They are less vocally hawkish than Poland and the Baltic states. But Czech leaders do not, deep down, believe in the EU's common line on Russia, which amounts to the rationalisation of impotence. The current consensus is that proffering the hand of friendship is a sound strategy because Russia will one day realise that co-operation is in its interests. Senior Czechs say this is not a strategy, it is just verbiage. They also suspect the EU will need a real Russia strategy quite soon," it adds. "The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, is an arch-critic of the EU. Mr Klaus's powers are mostly ceremonial, but he has influence. The Czechs have yet to ratify Lisbon, after Mr Klaus's ODS allies in the upper-house Senate demanded that the text be sent to the constitutional court for vetting," the Economist writes. "Jiri Pehe, a one-time aide to Mr Klaus's predecessor, Vaclav Havel, explains that Czechs see their presidents as philosopher-kings, whose strong opinions may not have concrete implications for everyday action. Many Czechs adored Mr Havel, he notes, and they loved hearing him denounce consumerism. Then they went shopping, because they were 'consumerist as hell'"," it adds. "Czechs believe in Europe, but not in the grandiose visions of the project: the endless treaties and institutional changes that will solve all problems. In Brussels such pragmatism is heretical. Next year promises to be interesting," the Economist writes.
(Ceske Noviny)
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