‘Queen for a Day’ Presidency Puts EU in Bind: Celestine Bohlen

Commentary by Celestine Bohlen

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Ask a random sample of Britons, Danes, Latvians and Italians who the president of the United States is, and you’ll hear an Obama chorus.

Ask them who the president of the European Union is, and you will probably draw a blank. Told it is Vaclav Klaus, they’d most likely say: Who?

The Europeans have only themselves to blame for such ignorance, given a system that allows the EU presidency to change hands every six months.

Now, at a time when the region is reeling from back-to-back crises, topped by the worst economic downtown in decades, it is the turn of the Czech Republic, a country of 10 million with a record as a reluctant EU member, let alone leader.

Their leadership -- or lack of it -- should clinch the argument for a permanent EU presidency that could give the continent the kind of clout it deserves and needs.

The current rotation system was originally devised to give each EU member a chance to be the region’s equivalent of “Queen for a Day,” and it worked well enough when the EU had just six members.

But now with 27, it is something of a crapshoot, given the huge disparities between say, Germany with 82 million people and a $3.3 trillion GDP and the island nation of Malta with 403,000 people and a GDP of $7.5 billion.

Sarkozy’s Reign

The Czech Republic wouldn’t be an obvious choice to lead Europe even in the best of times. The Czechs haven’t ratified a treaty designed to restructure the EU’s institutions; nor has it adopted the euro, the common currency now shared by 16 EU members, including as of Jan. 1, their neighbor and ex-partner, Slovakia.

The Czechs’ ambivalence about the EU is in stark contrast to the French who in July 2008 embraced their EU duties with obvious glee.

President Nicolas Sarkozy gave the job new heft and focus, and dashed around the world, negotiating a cease-fire here and organizing a global economic summit there. The Eiffel Tower turned a pretty shade of royal blue -- an EU color -- every night during the French presidency, which ended on Dec. 31.

Europe can surely do better than Czech President Klaus, a grumpy euro-skeptic, who seems bent on keeping a low-profile -- refusing even to fly the blue-and-yellow EU flag from the top of the Prague Castle.

‘Big Boys’

It takes a world-class crisis to throw the EU’s asymmetry into relief: small nations do better in boring times. It’s not the Czechs’ fault their presidency ran head-long into a war in the Middle East and a replay of the Russian-Ukrainian gas war.

In both cases, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek threw himself into the job, but in the end, these issues were turned over to Europe’s major powers. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave the Czech premier a symbolic pat on the back during his mission to Moscow, but paid greater heed to intermittent phone calls from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The big boys will never let a Topolanek decide anything,” said Dusan Triska, an economist who shares Klaus’ concern about the “democratic deficit” of EU institutions.

France’s snubbing of the Czech Republic began even before the handover took place. A leak from the Czech Embassy in Paris last October, showed that Sarkozy offered Topolanek a deal: France would take charge of the EU’s Union for the Mediterranean, leaving the Czechs a free hand in Eastern Europe.

The funny thing about this embarrassing disclosure was that it was confirmed twice, first by the Czech Foreign Ministry, which issued a formal apology, and then by the Czech National Security office which on Jan. 27 fined the embassy 77,000 koruna ($3,530).

Egg on Face

Usually, governments don’t go out of their way to acknowledge responsibility for minor accidents that have left egg all over their face, and the face of a major ally. It seems the concept of “plausible deniability” -- well-developed in advanced democracies -- has yet to reach Prague.

The Czechs, an ex-Soviet satellite, almost didn’t get a chance at the EU presidency. Under the EU’s proposed Lisbon Treaty, the rotating presidency would be dumped in favor of a full-time president, to be elected by national leaders for a maximum of two 2 1/2 year terms.

That treaty -- yet another attempt to consolidate the EU’s political infrastructure -- would have already been in effect had all 27 members ratified it last year. But the Irish rejected it and the Czechs delayed their ratification, leaving the rotating system in place for at least the rest of this year.

On the bright side, the current economic crisis is showing signs of concentrating people’s minds, both in Ireland and in the Czech Republic, raising expectations that the Lisbon Treaty and its permanent presidency will finally be approved, perhaps even this year.

Just so long as it’s adopted before January 2017, when Malta is due to take over.

(Celestine Bohlen is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Celestine Bohlen in Paris at cbohlen1@bloomberg.net