Britannia Radio

The more I hear of Vaclav Klaus the more I warm to him.  Here the  
disgraceful Tony Barber - a rampant europhile - vents his spleen.
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FINANCIAL TIMES - Brussels Blog      23.4.09
Vaclav Klaus: the EU’s naughty boy who won’t grow up
    by Tony Barber the FT's Brussels bureau chief

Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president, sounds like a man who intends to  
enjoy the next two months. In an interview last week with the Czech  
newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes, he merrily poured scorn on US and  
European Union measures to fight the world financial crisis and  
recession by suggesting that they drew on the spirit of 20th-century  
eastern European and Soviet communism.

Last month, he grabbed the headlines by engineering the downfall of  
Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek’s government right in the middle of  
the Czech Republic’s six-month EU presidency. In February, he  
prompted a walk-out by angry members of the European Parliament when  
he told them in a speech that their assembly did not encourage  
freedom of thought. As for his opinions on  climate change (misplaced  
alarmism), they are quite simply unrepeatable in polite [‘politically  
correct’ shurely? -cs]  European society.

Like a naughty child who leaves the fridge door open, kicks a  
football around the house, feeds the cat orange peel and questions  
every instruction he receives, Klaus just never gives up. Now his  
sights are set on the EU’s showpiece summit of heads of state and  
government on June 19-20 in Brussels. With Topolanek out of the way  
and the new interim government to be led by Jan Fischer, the worthy  
but politically faceless head of the Czech national statistical  
office, Klaus fancies the idea of chairing the EU summit.

The prospect of the super-eurosceptic Klaus taking charge of such an  
important event is causing sweat to break out on the brow of many a  
Eurocrat. For the summit must address two crucial issues: the  
guarantees to be promised to Ireland in return for another Irish  
referendum on the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty, and the question of  
whether to reappoint José Manuel Barroso as the European Commission  
president for a second five-year term.

Klaus is such a vociferous opponent of the Lisbon treaty that some in  
Brussels are wondering whether he is cooking up a plan to derail the  
summit by obstructing approval of the guarantees Ireland is seeking  
(the right to an Irish EU commissioner, pledges of non-interference  
in matters concerning taxation, neutrality and family law). Perhaps  
he also plans to disrupt the process by which EU leaders pick the  
next Commission president?

In reality, Klaus is nothing like as strong as the turbulent state of  
Czech politics and the EU’s frequent institutional paralysis make him  
appear. For one thing, the upper house of the Czech parliament is due  
to hold a vote in early May on ratifying the Lisbon treaty. It looks  
close, but the odds are that it will go through. If it does, Klaus  
will be powerless to stop the Irish getting their guarantees. Indeed,  
he will sooner or later have to add his presidential signature to the  
treaty, completing the process of Czech ratification.

In the second place, if there were even a hint that Klaus was  
planning to disrupt the June summit, other EU leaders could simply  
postpone the meeting until Sweden replaces the Czech Republic in the  
EU presidency on July 1. The same applies to the issue of Barroso’s  
renomination (though the real problem here may come from other  
leaders, not Klaus).

Klaus has had plenty of fun at the EU’s expense over the past four  
months, and he may yet have some more. Some of his ideas about  
puncturing the pomposity and self-delusion of the EU are on target.  
But in EU terms he is the naughty boy who will never grow up. The EU  
itself will move on and pretty quickly forget all about him.