Czech eye-Opener

The Malta Independent 

  

That Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, was labelled a euro-sceptic I knew. But that he held such strong convictions that the EU enlargement is not serving the interest of the accession countries still came to me as a surprise.

I had the priviledge last week to attend a conference where Klaus was invited to relate his views on the enlargement. In no uncertain terms he stated that the catching up process of his country to the EU average will be slowed down and not accelerated by the terms of the negotiated membership. He also felt dismayed that with each Treaty and after each EU summit a further step is taken to the final objective to render Europe a single political entity.

He argued vehemently that after 40 years of communism, eastern countries deserved to be given a longer period where they could catch up to EU average free form the bureaucracy of membership. This view indeed reflects the findings of a research conducted by the Cato Institute, a Washington-based public policy research foundation, that challenges the belief that joining the EU will improve the competitive position of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the world economy. I had written about this 4 weeks back ( Researchers vs the People – 3rd October 2003).

One could argue that Klaus has no prerogative on the truth and that his views could be challenged on the basis that it takes too much an economic perspective of the matter. He may be criticised as giving too low weighting to the political stability benefits of the enlargement which could lead to a speedier influx of foreign direct investment than would have been the case if membership was dragged out over a longer time horizon.

I had the opportunity to ask Klaus for an explanation of the disconnection between the views of the President of the Czech republic with those of the population at large considering the overwhelming majority (77%) with which the referendum was carried in Czech republic as in other East European accession states.

The reply he gave me is an eye-opener. After 40 years of communism and after going through the crush of the Prague Spring under Dubcek in August 1968 when Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Warsaw Pact forces, the fall of communism in 1989 gave the Czechs the dream of going back to Europe. The Accession Treaty which Klaus himself signed in Athens last April is the concrete expression of such dreams and in Klaus own words anyone who would have argued against the concretisation of such dreams would have been cut out of the political mainstream and considered a Milosevic. This explains why he had to keep quite silent during the referendum.

He told me that now that the issue has been sealed by the signing of the Athens treaty the real debate on the terms of the accession has started and there are critical views on its terms and on the proposals contained in the EU draft constitution. He said that there is a large and growing section in Czech Parliament that wishes to subject the EU constitution to a fresh referendum and he was confident that it is that referendum which will show the true expression of the people not just to be back in Europe but to go forward into the EU.

I think this is an eye-opener both to the government and the opposition. To the government not to close the door on a referendum on the Constitution. Apart from the democratic significance of such a referendum it could strengthen the government’s hand in arguing for fine-tuning of the draft constitution on the points mentioned by the Prime Minister, most of all the need to retain unanimity voting on foreign security and defence issues.

To the opposition it could give it an opportunity to enhance its new found zeal for EU membership and could appease the genuine though misguided efforts of KMB to re-negotiate the Treaty and instead insist on the Constitution safeguarding our right to veto on Foreign and Security policy (or at least on our participation therein) and on our right to having a fully fledged Commissioner and to participate equally as other States in the EU Presidency rotation.

Such a strategy would not only put Labour in line with quite acceptable mainstream thinking in using the Constitution referendum to stem the EU slide towards political Union, but would also give the MLP conference of next week the opportunity to discuss what it really should be discussing i.e. why where EU policies chosen before the election which were considered worth losing an election for, only to change them after the event.