When evaluating the Czech EU presidency, the first question we need to deal with is what we might expect from a successful presidency. According to most of the academic literature in the field, the country holding the presidency is expected to act as an honest broker, and thus as a country interested in promoting the interests of the EU, not solely its own interests. Even if the presiding country is simultaneously expected to highlight issues it deems a priority, a successful presidency clearly cannot be judged according to how well the country managed to promote its own interests, since it is in the nature of the presidency that these aspects will be toned down. Therefore, it would also be wrong to base such an evaluation on the results achieved compared to the targets stated in the working programme prior to the start of the presidency. Furthermore, presidencies take place during very different settings, with different agendas that need to be dealt with, and therefore it is very difficult to compare one presidency to another. The Czech EU presidency took place during a difficult period of incipient elections to the European Parliament, a Commission president seeking a renewed mandate, and an escalating economic crisis on top of institutional turbulence within the EU.
Any evaluation of an EU presidency faces serious methodological problems. It is very difficult; to say the least, to distinguish what has been accomplished by the presidency and, on the other hand, what was actually accomplished by other actors; i.e., other EU institutions (most notably the Commission) and the other Member States. Furthermore, the presidency takes place during a very short period in which most of the agenda is inherited. Therefore the question of what would have happened if another country would have been holding the presidency is nearly impossible to answer.
Despite these difficulties, I will present an evaluation of the Czech EU presidency here. The presidency can be assessed from two rather different perspectives. First, we can evaluate its concrete results. As I have mentioned, all evaluations of this aspect face methodological challenges. However, I would argue that from this perspective, the Czech Republic did better than was generally appreciated or expected. There is also a second dimension to the presidency, which I will refer to as visibility. Especially for a small or medium-sized country such as the Czech Republic, the presidency is a unique opportunity for the country to present itself and receive attention. In an EU with 27 Member States, this aspect is much more important than it was when the Union only had 15 members. Moreover, the country holding the presidency should also be the “face” of the EU during those six months. In both aspects regarding visibility the Czech EU Presidency clearly failed.
If we start by looking at the most difficult aspect to assess; the concrete results, there are some issues that could be considered successes or partial successes. The Eastern Partnership focusing on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus which was launched in May can be partly seen to be the result of long term Czech activities. The Eastern dimension has long been a key priority of the Czech Republic; even though it was launched as a Polish/Swedish initiative, the Czech Republic and its presidency should clearly receive some of the credit. One of the main Czech priorities was energy. Of course, the natural gas crisis that took place at the very beginning of the Czech EU presidency was not planned, but according to most analyses it was handled well, with the Czech presidency managing to maintain a united EU approach. Other successes in the field of energy were the adoption of the “third energy liberalisation package” and the fact that some progress was made regarding the Nabucco gas pipeline (including a deal with Turkey) which is an important step when it comes to the goal of diversifying EU energy supplies.
Another main priority of the Czech Republic was the economy. The Czech programme “Europe without Barriers” had had a more competitive EU as its main priority for quite some time. The Czech administration, however, did not expect they would be dealing with a global economic recession. The Czech message regarding the economic crisis was largely about respecting the rules of the single market and the Growth and Stability Pact, and they were reluctant to support any further major financial injections into the economy. The Czech position was welcomed in some parts of the EU and less so in others. When we compare the Czech approach with that of the Swedish EU presidency, they are in fact very similar. Both have been warning of the risks posed by increasing budget deficits and have strongly spoken out against protectionism. However, there might be a difference between the countries when it comes to their credibility. Sweden has done its homework better, while the former Czech administration has been stronger in its rhetoric - it is not likely that we ever will hear Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt talk about the “road to hell” in relation to US plans for economic recovery. Given that some countries actually wanted the EU to be on the offense in combating the global recession, such statements made by Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek did not correspond to what most people expected from the president of the European Council.
There are a few issues were we can say that the Czech EU presidency clearly failed, even though the role of the presidency makes failures hard to detect. The way the Gaza war was handled by the Czech administration has been criticised, but it might be unfair to judge the presidency for a few clumsy statements. Clearly the Gaza conflict would have been complicated to deal with for any presidency. A big minus, however, was the way the Czech Republic dealt with the Lisbon Treaty. The country’s failure to ratify the treaty itself before the beginning of its presidency caused concerns among other Member States and EU institutions. People began to question whether the Czech presidency would be capable of leading the work to provide Ireland with legal provisions for their second referendum based on the deal made at the European Council in December 2008. The fact that a deal was in place at the June European Council has sometimes been interpreted as having occurred in spite of the Czech presidency, not thanks to it. However, we should remember that the Lisbon Treaty was an obstacle for the planning of the Czech EU presidency - the Czech administration had to work for a long time with the possibility that the treaty might come into force on the first day of its presidency or during its presidency. In that case, the presidency would have had to deal with the unresolved issues in the treaty, such as the role of the permanent President of the European Council vis-a-vis the Prime Minister of the presiding country. This uncertainty was a problem for the Czech presidency.
The main difficulty for the Czech Republic in relation to the Lisbon Treaty was that it generated negative international publicity for the country. Moreover, it gave Václav Klaus the opportunity to get more exposure for his eurosceptic views. In general, as far as the visibility of the Czech Republic is concerned, the Czech EU presidency can best be described as a missed opportunity. As noted in the country’s work programme, it took up the presidency during the historic year of 2009, five years after accession and 20 years after the fall of communism. The Czech presidency was supposed to prove the sceptics wrong by showing that a new Member State could handle the presidency as well as any of the older ones. The fall of the government in March, as well as the many controversial statements of President Václav Klaus and the failure to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, meant the country failed to use this opportunity to present a positive image of itself to the rest of the EU. Moreover, the upcoming Hungarian and Polish presidencies in 2011 will now have to struggle with low expectations.
It is true that other governments have been replaced during previous Council presidencies. Those occasions, however, cannot be compared to what happened in the Czech Republic. With 27 Member States, the EU today is in a totally new situation. The smaller countries have far fewer opportunities to present themselves and their priorities. Why did Czech politicians fail to keep the government in office? According to many analysts, the main blame lies with the Social Democratic Party, the opposition party that called for the vote of confidence in the government, but the causes for the loss of confidence in the government are much broader. Several attempts were made to reach agreement between the opposition and the government, and for an outside observer it is hard to understand why one was not achieved. However, the political situation in the Czech Republic has not been healthy since the last election to the Chamber of Deputies in 2006, which ended with 100 seats for the left-wing parties (Social Democrats and Communists) and 100 mandates for the centre-right parties that later formed a coalition. The margin of support for the coalition was based on just two former Social Democratic MPs; it was clear from the very beginning that this would not be a stable solution, and it was actually surprising that the government lasted as long as it did. Furthermore, the situation was complicated by the fact that the election campaign in 2006 was very aggressive, culminating in the Social Democratleader Jiří Paroubek speaking of a “new 1948” on the night of the election (a reference to the communist takeover in 1948). The entire political elite bears responsibility for the government’s forced resignation in the middle of the presidency.
To some degree, the fall of the government was also linked to the euro-scepticism of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS). This was the main reason why two ODS MPs voted against their own government in the vote of confidence. They were disappointed by the fact that their fellow party members in the Chamber of Deputies had adopted the Lisbon Treaty and they thought the government’s demise could stop the ratification process. This brings us to the role of Klaus. In this case, his euro-scepticism proved important since the two ODS members voting against the government were heavily influenced by Klaus’s position on the Lisbon Treaty. The fall of the government was thus also a consequence of the split in the ODS on EU policy between a pragmatic party leadership and a dogmatic faction. The pragmatists in the leadership, are not very pro EU, but they respect the fact that they need to accept the Lisbon Treaty as a reasonable compromise for its future. The dogmatic faction, on the other hand, could not even consider accepting the Lisbon Treaty, despite the fact that it was considered important both for the presidency and for the survival of the coalition government. The presidency ultimately contributed to the pragmatic view of the ODS party leadership. In the longer run it is also likely that the ODS will become even more pragmatic, since ODS voters are rather pro-EU and also pro-Lisbon. However, for the presidency this change obviously comes too late. The presidency was a missed opportunity.
Mats Braun - author is Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations in Prague