středa 4. března 2009

Aftercrisis EU and future of Mr. Klaus

Preparing for trip to Riga, where new government is forming to tackle the crisis, I was wondering about heated debate from last week about new border lines in Europe - who is what from which perspective. Recent crisis has shown that new, undrawn border is emerging as well as we can expect that European union after this crisis will be different.
Undrawn border has name the euro. Common currency seems to play a role of nongeopolitical buffer zone between West and East and as proof for that we can use for example plea of Hungarian Prime Minister to ease Maastricht criteria or promises of Latvian politicians to stick with lat pegged to euro with all unpleasant consequencies like higher taxes and lower salaries in state sector. For the first time since divison of Czechoslovakia Slovaks could feel better protected from outside storm than Czechs and for the first time Poland - with exception of Kaczynski twins - is really persuading itself that national currency is not sacred cow.
But what is emerging from all the mess is a necessity to change the approach from EU perspective. There is nice piece about euroscepticism and crisis times from Gideon Rachman in Financial Times (read here) to which I would only add that one of collateral results of nowadays crisis management could be new EU architecture: more united Europe.
Consequencies are unpredictable. I had pleasure to explain to group of Catalan journalists Czech debate which was quite uneasy: Spain benefited from EU membership enourmously, doubters are only among hardline nationalists in Basque country, therefore for them was not understandable why these Czechs are not so ethusiastic about EU project.
We are not all Vaclav Klaus, this is the first point. Second, for forty years we had been receiving orders from Moscow, before that from Berlin, before that twenty years of freedom and before that 300 years from Vienna. I hope that this could at least partialy explain why we are so suspicious to anybody who tryes to impose any directive upon us and why we are looking at Brussels very carefuly even with argument that "Brussels" includes also ourselves. We know ourselves, so it even more suspicious.
Czech are commited to EU project, but we do not like to show too much enthusiasm for that (Poles call this "dirty Czech pragmatism"). But new aftercrisis situation with possibly more centralised EU governance mechanisms, more tied eurozone will be new challenge not only for our eurorealism and pragmatism, but for the whole Europe. And, fortunately, Mr. Klaus does not have chance to be elected again our president - he is serving his second and last term under present constitution. But discussions about direct presidentical elections - and change of constitution - are emerging.
But what about to offer him some interesting EU post in the new European architecture? Special envoy for climate change or special lecturer on populist affairs?

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