POST-COMMUNIST COUNTRIES AND EU PRESIDENCY Slovenia and the Czech Republic had allocated substantial funds and prepared for the challenge of presidency in advance. Both nations trained scores of young professionals to organise several European Union Councils summits, primarily the so-called ministerial councils – meetings of the EU nations’ ministers – which were scheduled in the course of their presidencies. Held at different locations in the host countries, these meetings were used to draw investors’ attention to the regions where the summits took place.
However, it quite often happens that unexpected problems demanding urgent attention interfere with the Council of the European Union's schedule.
The bulk of that responsibility is shouldered by the President of the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as by the Commissioner for External Relations, when problems concern foreign policy issues.
The Czech Republic came across several problems of this kind at the beginning of its presidency in 2009– namely, the gas crisis and the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Unfortunately, the EU was unable to resolve either issue.
A key element of any presiding country’s tenure is to propose discussions on one or two matters of common interest to all European countries and to ensure that decisions are both arrived at and adopted.
Neither Slovenia nor the Czech Republic did so as they were unaware of their presidential responsibility to concentrate on collective European action and focused exclusively on their own interests and problems during their respective presidencies.
For example, the Czech Republic put forward the idea of “Europe without Borders” during its presidency. The concept was loosely formulated at best and closely resembled the EU’s basic principles – the free movement of people, capital and goods.
Seasoned EU member nations usually select issues of common interest long before their tenure is due to begin.
They prepare for presidency by discussing ways of addressing the topics they have chosen with other member states beforehand, with a view to forming a coalition supporting their cause.
The Council of the European Union adopts its decisions by voting, most often following the so-called ‘qualified majority’ vote system. This means that at least 255 of the 345 votes must be cast in favour of any given solution, with the 255 votes in question corresponding to at least 62% of the EU’s population.
Each EU country is assigned a certain number of votes, defined in proportion to its population. Germany, France, Britain and Italy have the largest number of votes, with 29 votes each. That is why each presiding country, especially the small and medium-sized ones, needs to rally the support of large EU countries – and several medium-sized countries as well – in order to promote the issues they consider to be priorities.
The Czech Republic did not propose any issues for discussion during its presidency, but everyone expected it to act in favour of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty in countries where it had yet to be accepted – and primarily in the Czech Republic itself. Its dismal failure to live up to expectations despite Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek’s promises to the contrary on several occasions was disappointing. Unfortunately, Mr Topolanek did not seem to be aware that implementing the political promises he had made to European partners was a matter of his country’s honour.
The European Union is a group of democratic countries that have long had and will continue to have different, and often opposing, interests. However, their alliance is based on fundamental common objectives validated by agreements.
Therefore, any country holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union should begin by seeking common issues and ways of coming to lasting decisions.
Working with the EU involves lengthy discussions in search of compromise. PostCommunist countries have had little experience of this kind of cooperation until recently. Sates like Slovenia and the Czech Republic previously relied on a centralised system of government, where decisions were made with no regard to the principle that decisions should benefit each member country in one way or another.
This knowledge can be acquired progressively, but the nature of the errors made by the Czech Republic and Slovenia are much more fundamental.
Only a politically united country that has reached a consensus on specific issues it has chosen to promote can succeed in acting as an effective EU president.
Lacking unanimity, or at least a democratic majority, the presiding country will not attain any substantial results because each European partner will wonder if it can rely on the said country’s democratic majority. Its political views on the given question must not vary dramatically.
The EU knew that Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Topolanek’s government and the country’s key opposition SocialDemocratic party had opposing views on the EU and integration in general.
Leading EU politicians have repeatedly stated that governments are considered to be partners, and that it was the Czech prime minister and not the Czech president who chaired the Council of the European Union. However, they did not know that the Czech government had neither the power nor the desire to come to an agreement with the opposition on any issue that could be considered a European priority, despite the fact that the opposition party’s influence in the Czech parliament was nearly equal to that of the ruling party.
The ensuing political turmoil resulted in the Czech government’s mid-term resignation from the EU presidency; a move which provoked ill will in other postCommunist countries as it strengthened Western European doubts about their political maturity.
In addition to various basic official agreements, the EU also has several unwritten codes of conduct – many of which are a result of the period after WWII when solidarity and the inviolability of common rules were a prominent concern.
Consequently, the EU is more than a geographic community of shared interests and a common market; it is also an alliance of nations united by a collective understanding that its members sometimes have to sacrifice their own shortterm interests to preserve the efficiency of the Union as a whole.
This is a fundamental characteristic that distinguishes the EU from other multistate entities, which are primarily based only on common interests. EU member states are therefore wary of a country that doesn’t even have the discipline to act as a unified and reliable partner for the duration of its presidency.
Unfortunately, a considerable group of post-Communist states that joined the EU after 2004 have yet to achieve the necessary political maturity which allows governing and opposition parties to come to an agreement in the name of common goals when necessary, despite political rivalry on a national level.
Slovenia is another example of a postCommunist country that was a disappointment in its role as an EU presidential nation. Despite long preparations for its presidency and its relatively good political and economical unity on a national level, Slovenia allowed itself to get involved in border disputes with Croatia during its presidency.
Before 1991, Slovenia and Croatia both withdrew from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without settling the border issue. The issue in question centres on the coastal region of Istria, and particularly the territory surrounding the port of Trieste that was divided between Italy and Slovenia after WWII. This left Slovenia with a narrow strip of the coast as its only access to the Adriatic Sea.
Croatia is located on the other side of the region, with the border between Croatia and Slovenia running in the Gulf of Piran, which is located in the northern part of the Adriatic Sea and is a part of the Gulf of Trieste. This leaves Slovenia with very little access to neutral waters.
Unable to reach an amicable settlement with Croatia, where nationalist sentiments are running high, Slovenia has been trying to negotiate a solution to the dispute. Slovenia chose not suspend discussions on the subject during its EU presidency; even though it knew that it should primarily focus on common European issues rather than arguing about a local border dispute with a country like Croatia, which was negotiating accession to the EU.
In December 2008, several months after the end of its EU presidency, Slovenia vetoed the EU’s accession talks with Croatia, thereby clearly demonstrating its incapacity to accept one of the fundamental principles of the EU. The accession talks comprise 35 items that concern different spheres of politics, economics and the law, whereas border disputes must be settled either before or immediately after the candidate country joins the EU.
The EU was not designed to settle border disputes. It operates based on a principle formulated by the visionary Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who believed that borders should be dissolved rather than moved.
In September 2009, Slovenia lifted its veto on Croatia's accession talks as Croatia had promised to entrust the border issue to the European Court and the two countries pledged to honour the court’s ruling on the issue.
These examples clearly show that postCommunist countries have yet to learn how to adjust their customs and concepts of international relations to EU principles and negotiating methods.
In the five years since their accession, these nations have not done much to achieve this goal.
Unlike these countries, the EU’s most recent president nation Sweden has focused exclusively on climate change since taking over from the Czech Republic in July, 2009. Sweden has been working assiduously to attain a consensus on the problem, which was discussed at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December.
Sweden’s main goal was to ensure that talks on the new climate protocol arrive at concrete conclusions. The Swedes had already contributed to the success of the Lisbon Treaty referendum in Ireland. Without the assistance of EU agencies, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, the Irish government could not have resolved the problem single-handedly.
Firstly, the EU accepted some of Ireland’s demands and secondly, it took more affirmative action in Ireland’s proEU campaign than Slovenia did for the first referendum last year during its EU presidency. This compounded disappointment in Slovenia because the EU did very little to ensure the success of the Irish referendum during the nation’s presidency.
The policies that these post-Communist nations have chosen to follow outside the EU and NATO are certain to fail, regardless of how much the EU listens to arguments based on historically justified fears of Russian domination. The decision not to deploy ballistic missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic showed that the EU will never accept bilateral agreements with a non-European power, even as friendly an allied country as the United States.
The EU is working hard to formulate common foreign and security policies, and will not be distracted. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading members of the EU, say that one must have no illusions about the standards of democracy in Russia, yet should seek to develop partnership relations with it.
This is a nearly impossible task for small post-Communist countries. The situation would have been simple had Russia come closer to achieving genuine democracy.
In other words, the only reliable kind of action is to support and, whenever possible, influence European policy with regard to the EU’s Eastern neighbours.
RUDOLF KUCERA
