January 19, 2009
In the months leading up to the start of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU, the Czech and European media speculated on whether the Czech President and Prime Minister would overcome their mutual conflict and represent the country consistently. The first days of 2009 have shown that management of the Czech Presidency’s external communications is fully in the hands of the Prime Minister, but on matters requiring engagement in the domestic political debate, the Czech PM continues to lose for the time being. Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by the Czech Parliament is one of these matters.
The President
“This is a victory for freedom and rationality over the artificial projects of the elite and the European bureaucracy.” These are the comments of Czech President Václav Klaus on the result of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty last June. Even though Klaus was Prime Minister in 1996 when the Czech Republic applied to join the European Union, for quite some time now he has made no secret of his disagreement with the post-Maastricht development of European integration. When Klaus was leading the parliamentary opposition from 1998-2002 his remarks might have seemed mere traditional oppositional rhetoric, but after he became the President (in 2003) of a candidate country and then of a Member State, his comments became a much more sensitive matter. When a head of state which is the direct recipient of billions of euro from the European budget says that “the EU costs more than it has effect”, such comments justifiably provoke the interest of those countries which contribute the most to the EU budget.
In the Czech constitutional order the President fulfills a function that is mostly ceremonial and formal. A large part of his decisions must be signed off on by cabinet ministers or the Prime Minister. In the Czech democratic political tradition, this formally weak President finds room to implement his policies as an informal authority, an inspirational intellectual leader of part of the political elite. Both Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Václav Havel were such leaders. Unlike his predecessors, the current Czech President, educated as an economist, came to the presidential office from high politics, and the unpretentious style of intellectual leadership is foreign to him. He has built his political style on actively seeking out enemies in order to caricature and criticize their opinions. He calls ecologists “environmentalists”, supporters of non-governmental organizations “NGO-ists”, advocates of European integration “Europists”, etc. According to the President, what these various trends all have in common is that they are the enemies of freedom and a free society.
The President argues “freedom” in the fight against the Lisbon Treaty as well, as is evident from his remarks above on the results of the Irish referendum. However, in reality he is not interested in a serious discussion about the disputed passages of the treaty, such as the “passerelles”, the expansion of voting by a qualified majority, or the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Klaus primarily considers the treaty a product of the European establishment, something out of the realm of his own intellectual world which he would never accept. The elites and the “European bureaucracy” are the real target of the President’s opposition in the quote above. Klaus’s position has always been based in his certainty that he would dominate domestically and on the fact that he can “read” his opponents (this is why he has consistently run for the presidency even if not chosen until the 9th round). However, the European elite is removed from him not only in terms of its perspective, which is capable of viewing problems from a point of view other than a national one, but also in terms of its shared values, which go beyond the dogmatic divisions of the left-right spectrum. Such elites, which most recently has come to include Czech PM Topolánek (Klaus’s successor at the head of the party Klaus founded) will be the President’s enemy no matter what they do.
Opponents
While the President is able to express himself vaguely on the Lisbon Treaty, raising the indistinct specters of “loss of sovereignty” and “threats to freedom”, his followers (in the ODS party and on the extreme right) as well as the Communists must present more specific reasons for rejecting the treaty when asked about their positions by the media. One of the least credible but strongly emotionally-charged arguments for many Czechs is the concern that a legally binding EU Charter of Fundamental Rights would make it possible for Sudeten Germans to demand the restitution of their former property in the Czech lands. The majority of opponents to the treaty either point to the doubts expressed by the President or carefully say that it is necessary to thoroughly evaluate the constitutionality of everything beforehand.
However, it was not the President who asked the Constitutional Court to review the Lisbon Treaty (he joined the request later), but the Senate, which until the fall elections last year was dominated by the ODS party. This strongest of the governing parties has undergone a lengthy development, from Klaus’s open euroscepticism to the pragmatic approach of Czech PM Topolánek, who succeeded for the first time in 2006 in negotiating a significantly pro-European coalition agreement with the Greens and the Christian Democrats, and earned support for his center-right government projects from most of his party (confirmed by his re-election by 63 % in December 2008). Klaus’s “Prague Castle clique” in the Chamber of Deputies, a group directly connected to the executive, has been reduced to a few individuals (for the time being more have not come forward). The strongest opposition to the Lisbon Treaty is in the politically low-profile Senate and is led by its ODS party members (mostly municipal-level politicians with no experience of the executive or foreign policy, viewing the EU from the standpoint of the transfer of money from Structural Funds). Senators are not very dependent on the party leadership (they are elected through the majority system), they have a six-year mandate, and their decisions can be easily overruled in most cases by the Parliament’s second chamber. Therefore – for reasons similar to those of the President – they have found in the Lisbon Treaty an ideal instrument for drawing attention and showing the strength of their often-underestimated institution. They also know that international treaties cannot be ratified without the agreement of both chambers of Parliament and the signature of the President (in the Czech Constitution it is he who “negotiates international treaties”).
Supporters
With the exception of the Green Party and some liberal MEPs, the Lisbon Treaty does not have any passionate advocates in the Czech Republic. There is also no charismatic, convincing leader to defend and advocate for the treaty. That advocate should be Czech PM Topolánek, who signed the document in Lisbon, but even he has made no secret of his lukewarm relationship to the treaty, which he considers a “necessary evil”. The Prime Minister and Czech Deputy Minister for EU Affairs Alexandr Vondra present the treaty as a compromise which will not bring much to the Czech Republic but which is rather a kind of tax for membership in the 27-member community. However, the more they move during the Czech EU Presidency among their European colleagues and journalists who ask them about the Lisbon Treaty, the more they evidently seem to be realizing their own isolation, and their statements have become more amenable and reasonable.
The Social Democrats (ČSSD) are 100 % supporters of the Lisbon Treaty. However, in their case this is probably mostly the opportunistic rhetoric of an opposition criticizing the government’s hesitancy than a principled stance. ČSSD chair Jiří Paroubek has said that “he can afford the luxury of supporting the Lisbon Treaty even though the majority of ČSSD voters disagree with it” (because they do not understand it and are not interested in the EU). Ratification of the treaty is not the main foreign policy topic in the Czech Republic today. The establishment of the American radar base or the participation of Czech soldiers in foreign missions (Afghanistan, Kosovo) are matters which the public follows with much more sensitivity, and the Social Democrats have successful established their opposition policy on these topics. The Lisbon Treaty is rather a side interest.
Former Czech President Havel, who remains active in the public sphere, publicly supports the Lisbon Treaty. However, a greater priority for him is the treaty on locating an American radar base on Czech territory, which in his opinion will decisively anchor the Czech Republic in terms of its foreign policy, while the Lisbon Treaty will “merely” improve the existing system of the European Union.
The way forward
After last year’s Constitutional Court decision, according to which the Lisbon Treaty does not contravene the Czech constitutional order, most of the opponents’ arguments no longer apply. The President has considered the treaty “dead” ever since the Irish “No” vote and refused to say whether he would sign it should it make it through the Czech Parliament. The Czech Senate has once again come forward to say that it is concerned the Chamber of Deputies would overrule it should the so-called “passerelles” be approved, and the Senators (mainly from ODS) are conditioning their support for the treaty on the adoption of a conjunction law that would formalize the relationship between both chambers of Parliament. However, the discussion of such legislation could take more than a year. The government realizes its weakened position as the presiding EU country when it comes to negotiating the reform of European institutions, but after his massive losses in the regional and Senate elections last year, Czech PM Topolánek does not even have enough political credit to push the treaty through in his own party. In this situation we can only rely on the political responsibility of individual coalition and opposition politicians.