EUA - The New York Times
Título: Czech Leader Questions Path for Europe
Data: 04/08/2009
By DAN BILEFSKY and STEPHEN CASTLE
PRAGUE — When the European Union and Russia held their most recent summit meeting in May, the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, stunned European diplomats when he passed out copies of his book denouncing the fight against global warming — a central policy of the 27-nation bloc he was supposed to lead.
Just before the summit meeting, Mr. Klaus, whose country held the rotating presidency of the European Union, warned his European colleagues that they should take greater heed of Russian concerns than those of “small Estonia or Lithuania” — two former Soviet republics that are now, like the Czech Republic, members of the union.
The European Union is the world’s biggest political and economic bloc, and it often aspires to global leadership. But Mr. Klaus, a contrarian agitator who is also the head of state of one of Eastern Europe’s wealthiest democracies, does not agree with many things the European Union espouses — or even that Europe should have a strong union. He declined to display its gold-starred flag in his office during his nation’s presidential term.
The fact that he was one of Europe’s top representatives at the height of the global economic crisis reveals the difficult trade-offs made to achieve the semblance of unity, as well as the limits of Europe’s clout. The European Union rotates the top leadership post among its members in half-year increments, irrespective of their size or, in some cases, commitment to its professed goals.
Mr. Klaus helped topple the Czech government in March midway through the Czech presidency, embarrassing many supporters of Europe in his homeland and leaving the bloc of 495 million people rudderless during the financial crisis.
Even after the Czechs ceded the presidency to Sweden at the end of June, Mr. Klaus remains a potent symbol of the difficulties of acting collectively in a union divided between leaders who favor greater integration, and those like Mr. Klaus who cling to national sovereignty.
Soon Mr. Klaus may have the opportunity for the ultimate act of sabotage. In a few months he will be asked to sign the Lisbon Treaty, which aims to enhance the bloc’s role on the world stage by creating, among other things, a permanent European presidency. The treaty has finally approached ratification after years of setbacks, but Mr. Klaus, one of its fiercest critics, has warned that it will create a centralized “superstate.”
In order to be ratified, the treaty must be signed by all 27 nations, including Ireland, which rejected it in a referendum last summer and will vote again in October. Should the Irish vote “yes,” as they are expected to do after receiving generous concessions, Mr. Klaus could prove to be the last holdout, and bring the postwar project of European integration tumbling down.
“Klaus is the ultimate provocateur and would relish the opportunity to create a mess and to see Brussels officials go ballistic,” said Jaroslav Plesl, deputy editor of the Czech daily Lidove Noviny, who has spent more than a decade covering Mr. Klaus.
The Czech presidency, argues Thomas Klau of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris, represented “the first time when the E.U. presidency practically collapsed and abdicated.”
Czech officials reject this characterization and emphasize that their leadership secured agreement on 84 legislative initiatives, including a new framework for financial regulation. The Czechs also successfully mediated a gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine that left several countries shivering this past winter. But much of the hard work by studious Czech technocrats was overshadowed by the showmanship of their political leaders.
There were signs of trouble even before the Czechs took over the presidency from France in January, with senior officials in the Élysée Palace so alarmed that they suggested bypassing the country altogether.
Adding to the tension was an ideological divide over how to respond to the economic slump, with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France pushing for a big financial stimulus package to combat the downturn and Mr. Klaus, an economist by training and ardent exponent of free markets, equating his methods to “old socialism.” Several countries echoed the Czech position, including Germany, which, traumatized by the hyperinflation of the 1920s, was wary of spending its way out of the recession.
Even without these economic differences, Alexandr Vondra, the former Czech deputy prime minister for European affairs, argued in an interview that from the first days of the Czech presidency, larger countries like France were determined to undermine it.
“We were under fire from the start,” he said. “The ayatollahs of the Lisbon Treaty in Brussels and Paris wanted us to fail in order to prove their argument that the rotating E.U. presidency didn’t work and that the E.U. couldn’t function without a new treaty.”
In November, Mr. Klaus set the stage for the Czech presidency when he visited Ireland’s leading activist against the Lisbon Treaty. He praised him as a “dissident” akin to Czechoslovak rebels like Vaclav Havel who had languished in prison during the communist era. For Ireland’s pro-European government, battling to secure passage of a treaty that had plenty of domestic opponents, the words were treated as an undiplomatic interference.
Many of the problems during the presidency were rooted in the toxic political atmosphere in Prague. Mr. Klaus was engaged in constant combat with Mirek Topolanek, the prime minister, a fellow center-right leader whom he feared was becoming too enamored of European plans concocted in Brussels. Colleagues say he also resented Mr. Topolanek, who as prime minister was expected to coordinate the Czech presidency of the union, for hogging the spotlight.
“It was no secret that Mr. Klaus didn’t like Mr. Topolanek and he openly expressed happiness when the government fell,” said Mr. Vondra, the former deputy prime minister.
Indeed, throughout their presidency, analysts say, the Czechs — and not just their intransigent president — failed to appreciate the difference between speaking for themselves and representing the bloc as a whole.
In early January, a spokesman for the Czech presidency described the Israeli offensive in Gaza as more defensive than offensive, taking a position that was anathema to most big European nations, including France, which had strongly condemned Israel’s action. That prompted the Czechs to revoke their comments, which they said had been misunderstood.
Likewise, the Czechs apologized to several countries for a public artwork they commissioned in Brussels to celebrate their presidency. The art installation consisted of an avowedly satirical map of Europe that depicted Bulgaria as a Turkish toilet and Germany as a highway resembling a swastika, among other offenses.
Prime Minister Topolanek also took on President Obama’s economic policies even as the United States and Europe were trying to show solidarity in responding to the slump. Ahead of Mr. Obama’s first presidential trip to Europe, Mr. Topolanek called the American fiscal stimulus package “a road to hell” in a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
Mr. Vondra noted wryly that the famously agnostic Czechs were less afraid of hell than Americans, but acknowledged that Mr. Topolanek’s “overstatement” may have been intended to prove his relevance. Only a day earlier, rebel members of the Czech Parliament — urged on by Mr. Klaus — had helped bring down the government.
The speech, he said, was also a reflection of how the European Union, dominated by a few large countries, forced smaller member states to speak loudly — or risk irrelevance.
With Mr. Topolanek a lame duck, the signature event of the Czech presidency — a May meeting to engage with the European Union’s eastern neighbors, including Georgia, Moldova and Belarus — was snubbed by leaders of the main European players, including France, Britain and Italy.
The Czechs scrambled to assemble a new team of ministers they could send to lead meetings in Brussels. The new prime minister, Jan Fischer, a colorless but able bureaucrat, was recruited from his job as the head of the Czech statistical service.
When the Czechs led a European summit meeting in Brussels in June, aimed at overcoming Irish resistance to the Lisbon Treaty, they were sidelined at central negotiations, which were conducted mainly by Germany and France, European diplomats said.
When presented at the meeting with a menu of Czech food, including roast duck, cabbage and traditional potato dumplings, Mr. Sarkozy seemed to summarize the mood: he declined and asked for an omelet instead.
Dan Bilefsky reported from Prague, and Stephen Castle from Brussels.
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