Václav Havel and the presidential election In many respects, the election of the head of state takes place “in the shadow" of Václav Havel. And several candidates immediately appealed to the legacy of the ex-president, who died in December 2011. The first “Havellite” is understandably Karel Schwarzenberg.
The Future of the EU from the Visegrad perspective: Common concerns or common visions? Even if the EU evolves towards a deeper integrated entity, it is likely that not all the current Members States will be involved in the same way. What influence would it have in the Visegrad cooperation? Is it an opportunity or a challenge? Is the Visegrad group a useful platform for cooperation in the EU issues in general or just in natural particular policies? What strategic interests these countries share and where are they moving apart?
The euro crisis and Germany’s role through Czech perspective The “nation-state-based” current in Czech politics views German leadership in the EU as problematic and potentially unacceptable. A minority was accusing Germany of hegemony and dictates even before the euro crisis. In 2010, Václav Klaus stated that “Germany [had] achieved through peaceful means the clear European hegemony which it had unsuccessfully sought in two world wars”.
2012 – A YEAR FULL OF CHANGES The next regular parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic will take place in roughly a year and a half. It is thus clear that Petr Nečas’s cabinet is entering the last phase of its term of office, during which it will not implement such major reforms. The government managed to complete its greatest piece of work in 2012, however.
A New Start for the Czech Green Party The unsuccessful parliamentary elections in the spring of 2010 were the culmination of one stage in the history of the Czech Green Party. It was the party’s first participation in government as well as in parliament, a period of relatively good financing for the party, and what at the time was an unprecedented expansion in party membership. But this period will always be associated with sharp intra-party conflicts, the break-up of the parliamentary group and above all the gradual erosion of public trust, which completely collapsed in May 2010.
The History and Memory of Communism in the Czech Republic On discussions surrounding the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and understanding contemporary history The Czech reflection on communism is still undertaken in peculiar waves even twenty years after its fall. Indifference and extreme anti-communism with the accompanying desire to name and marginalise the culprits of past evils regularly alternate or supplement one another.
Czech EU Presidency – a Missed Opportunity 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.
The Czech EU-Presidency - A Polish Perspective The Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU has, since the very beginning, attracted negative comments, especially in the “old” member states. A “new” rather small member state, which has not yet ratified the Lisbon Treaty, was under close scrutiny of the more experienced and influential partners in the Community. The deepening financial crisis and the volatile situation on the European stage as well as the new American administration getting into power, all that suggested that the time of the Czech Presidency would be full of new challenges.
Is the Czech Republic Still Abstaining on Human Rights? When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN in 1948, eight of its 48 member countries abstained from the final vote: South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yugoslavia, USSR, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine and Czechoslovakia. While watching developments in human rights protections in the Czech Republic over the past 15 years, I have often reflected on the repercussions of that abstention. The Charter 77 movement, which resulted in Civic Forum and the democratic transition of 1989, has been lauded internationally, especially in the English-speaking world, for having based its challenge to totalitarianism on demanding respect for human rights.