Politico: Weak support for liberal democracy in EU’s east, poll says

The study published by the Globsec think tank found that in four out of 10 countries surveyed — Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria — less than 50 percent of respondents backed "liberal democracy with regular elections and multiparty system" as the best form of government. [...]

In Austria, the preference was reversed, with the equivalent figures 7 percent and 92 percent. Meanwhile, in Hungary and Poland, 81 percent and 66 percent, respectively, voiced support for the system of liberal democracy. Twelve percent and 26 percent respectively want a strong leader. [...]

Majorities in Slovakia (72 percent), Estonia (56 percent), Hungary (52 percent) and the Czech Republic (72 percent) said migrants threaten their identity and values. [...]

In Hungary, 64 percent of respondents said they believe the government influences the media, while 62 percent said the same in Poland. Meanwhile 57 percent of Austrians said "oligarchs and strong financial groups" have such an influence.

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Social Europe: Keeping the promise of eurozone convergence

Fundamentally, they are political. Technical proposals for rendering the eurozone robust have been tabled time and again: a eurozone investment budget, a European deposit-insurance scheme, a proper eurozone unemployment-(re)insurance system, the issuance of joint- and several-liability eurobonds. And, time and time again, these have been discussed, diluted and typically disposed of in a drawer.

The truth is there is insufficient trust to move forward. Resilience requires risk-sharing; risk-sharing requires trust. Trust, however, has been eroded by disappointment—disappointment that a decade of austerity has failed to reduce debt, disappointment that two decades of the euro have failed to bring convergence. [...]

This promise has not been fulfilled. On the contrary, the eurozone has been drifting apart—since long before the current crisis. While in 1999, GDP per capita in northern Europe was around €2,000 above the eurozone average, by 2019 it was €4,500 higher. Conversely, Italy and other southern-European countries have lost ground, from about €4,000 below the eurozone average in 1999 to €7,500 below 20 years later. Instead of shrinking, the gap has doubled. [...]

A more promising approach is to even out the regional distribution of value added. Andalusia, the Uckermark and metropolitan areas such as Naples or Thessaloniki should be brought to similar levels of productivity as Munich, Milan or the Amsterdam metropolitan area.

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Spiegel: Right-Wing Extremists Could Win Big in Slovak Election

The other parties in the Slovak parliament, to be sure, have made clear that they do not intend to form a coalition with Kotleba under any circumstances. But whether they will remain true to their word is by no means certain. The political landscape is fissured and the liberal camp is divided: If the far-right does as well as polls suggest it could in next week's election, democracy in Slovakia could soon follow the same path as Poland and Hungary. And this despite the fact that Slovakia has long been considered an example of successful integration with the West. Slovakia's roughly 5 million citizens have for years achieved annual economic growth of at least 3 percent and the country enjoys full employment. Carmakers like Mercedes, Kia, VW and Renault are the largest employers. Slovakia adopted the euro in 2005. [...]

Ideological differences have prevented the formation of a united, democratic bloc in the center -- one that could siphon off support from SMER on the left and fend off the demagogue Kotleba on the right. The political center, though, is frayed, and the egos of the party leaders has made any kind of rapprochement difficult. [...]

In 2017, he even handed out checks to poor families worth exactly 1,488 euros ($1,610). The number is a popular code among white supremacists: The number 14 is shorthand for the "14 Words" slogan popularized by the American neo-Nazi David Lane, while 88 stands for "Heil Hitler," as H is the eighth letter in the alphabet. The message that Kotleba sends to voters is that they can feel comfortable identifying with their nationalist history. And that includes the Slovak government, which during World War II was long controlled by Hitler. The clerical-fascist regime of the dictator Jozef Tiso eliminated members of the opposition and helped deport Slovak Jews, most of whom were sent to Auschwitz.

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Ciceroni: Slovak elections & democracy explained

In the first video of our series about elections and democracy, we talk about the parliamentary elections and history of democracy in Slovakia.

The Economist: Central and eastern Europeans are mostly happy with progress since 1989

Standards of living for most of the region’s peoples have vastly improved, and most of them know it. New polling by the Pew Research Centre shows that 81% of Poles, 78% of Czechs and 55% of Hungarians agree that this is the case. Only Bulgarians on balance take a gloomy view, with just 32% of them thinking that their standard of living has improved since 1989. Development has been patchy, but for every depopulating and ageing rustbelt in eastern Europe there is a booming industrial region, a tech cluster or a services centre desperate for more workers. [...]

After three decades of democracy, cynicism about politicians is as widespread as it is in western Europe. In Slovakia 63% of people think most elected officials do not care what they think, a Pew poll finds; in Hungary, 71% and in Bulgaria, 78%. By way of comparison, the figures in France and Britain are 76% and 70%, respectively.

In western Europe and America such anger at the ruling class has translated into votes for nationalists, populists, Brexit and Donald Trump. In Hungary and Poland those who feel left behind tend to blame liberalism and the West. Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, who was an anti-communist activist in Hungary in 1989, says that many of her compatriots were disappointed after the fall of communism because they expected their country “to become like Austria overnight”. It did not, of course, but gdp per person, not to mention life expectancy, has risen sharply across the region.

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Foreign Policy: Can Zuzana Caputova Save Slovakia?

A talented orator, Caputova comes across as reserved but confident, the qualities she first showed to the public in televised presidential debates in February and March. She speaks openly about truth, justice, and equality, which, according to her supporters, embodies a positive message reminiscent of Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright turned president of Czechoslovakia, who has remained a political and moral icon in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic since they split apart. [...]

Caputova’s greatest triumph as a lawyer—and her ticket to the national political stage—was a victory against an illegal dumpsite in her hometown of Pezinok in western Slovakia. The 14-year battle against a wealthy developer with ties to local authorities—which involved filing lawsuits, organizing protests, and petitions to European Union institutions—won her the 2016 Goldman Prize, a leading award honoring environmental activists often called the Green Nobel. [...]

Given the ruling party’s close ties with an indicted tycoon, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Caputova, who was a frequent participant at anti-government demonstrations after the murders, has cast her campaign as a struggle between good and evil. With the catchy Star Wars-like election slogan “Postavme sa zlu, spolu to dokazeme” (“Let’s face the evil together”), she offered herself as a new breed of politician: exciting, different, and untainted by scandals. [...]

The most recent presidential polls show Caputova hovering around 60 percent of the vote, well ahead of second-place Maros Sefcovic, a current EU commissioner. A 52-year-old Soviet-educated career diplomat who has gained a reputation for being genuinely pro-European, he was accused by opponents of pandering when, in order to attract right-wing voters, he appealed to “traditional, Christian values” in contrast to what he called Caputova’s “ultraliberal agenda.”

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Political Critique: Could Slovakia Elect A (Somewhat) Progressive President?

Interesting times have come upon Slovakia: while the mass gatherings remembering that it has been a year since the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak still chanted slogans protesting against the rule of the SMER-SD party (social democrats in name only, in reality your garden variety populists with a conservative bent), they only served as a sad punctuation of the fact nothing really happened apart from the resignation of the then-PM. Robert Fico, apparently finding himself without anything to do, decided that ruling the country should be followed up by being appointed a judge of the Constitutional Court after having brilliantly convinced the Parliament that 13,5 is, in fact, more than 15 when it comes to the required number of years spent working as lawyer. Almost immediately afterward, the genius mathematician’s judicial career was nipped in the bud by the current President, who – not unreasonably – pointed out that the function has a moral dimension and a man forced to resign over mass public protests concerning the process of investigating a murder might not be the best candidate for a judge. Fico responded by having his party boycott the nominations of all the other candidates, leaving the Constitutional court effectively paralyzed as the four remaining judges is a number insufficient to reach a verdict in most issues. Which might pose some problems as the Slovaks are about to elect a new President and the Constitution’s wording regarding the amount of votes required to win the first round is unclear. And the only one with the authority to re-interpret that is, you guessed it, the Constitutional Court, currently lacking the manpower do anything about the mess thanks to a vengeful ex-PM. Interesting times, interesting times. [...]

52% is an optimistic estimate, especially for a liberal candidate in mostly conservative Slovakia. But there are several factors playing in Čaputová’s favor. One, people are disillusioned with the current government as the Ján Kuciak anniversary protests showed, and Čaputová has no connections to that; her biggest claim to fame before the elections was environmental activism, specifically (and more shockingly, successfully) fighting against an illegal landfill built by a business connected to both SMER and Kuciak-implicated businessman Kočner – according to her website, anyway. Two, she is potentially acceptable to voters who do not necessarily share her views but are rightly terrified of having their country represented by a conspiracy freak or a neo-Nazi. Three, she is the only candidate openly supportive of minorities; such trustworthy sources as the Czech mutation of Sputnik frequently accuse her of such horrible crimes as supporting LGBT equality and pro-immigration propaganda. [...]

See, the President of Slovakia is purely representative (unless they pull a Zeman, may his hemorrhoids explode, and start overstepping their authority), and a lot of their power is the power to draw attention and open public discussion. Slovakia needs this; we’re talking a country that has decided to incorporate the frankly medieval „traditional“ definition of marriage into its Constitution as late as 2014. A President sympathetic to the plights of minorities could finally draw out the issues “we just don’t talk about” like discrimination of minorities to public attention – kicking and screaming, if necessary.

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The Guardian: How a Slovakian neo-Nazi got elected

In many of the smaller settlements there were simply not enough jobs, and the most talented people got out as soon as they could. There was a vague resentment at being seen as second-class citizens inside the European Union, and a more acute feeling that the Slovak political class was isolated from the masses and only interested in lining its pockets. Soon enough, the same issues would fuel the rise of rightwing populism across the region. Within a few years, after migration and nationalism had taken over the political agenda, much of Europe would also be grappling with the far-right’s success at the ballot box. But back in 2013, nobody was expecting a neo-Nazi to win an election. How was it possible that 55% of voters had backed someone this extreme? [...]

Kotleba rebuffed my attempts to talk with him, saying he did not trust western journalists, so, instead, I met Milan Uhrík, who was Kotleba’s deputy in Banská Bystrica and is now an MP from his party. We drank coffee in a shopping mall outside his home town of Nitra, an hour’s drive away from Banská Bystrica. Regarded as the polished face of Kotleba’s party, Uhrík had a couple of days’ worth of light stubble and wore a checked shirt. He spoke to me softly in fluent English, and although he was friendly enough, within seven minutes of us sitting down, he was on the defensive, insisting unprompted that he had no problems with “the Jews”. He repeatedly denied Kotleba or the party was racist or fascist, batting away criticism with wide-eyed mock-surprise and the predictable retort that the real victims of discrimination were white Slovaks.

Uhrík ran over what he saw as the achievements of Kotleba’s time in office, which he lamented were fairly miserly only because the central government had blocked them from doing more. I asked him what he was most proud of, and he buried himself in his phone, looking for the right English translation. “Ah, pickaxes, that’s the word,” he said with a boyish grin. “Pickaxes and shovels – that was our programme.” The policy in question hit on two of Kotleba’s favourite themes in one: Roma and roads. It involved long-term unemployed people being put to manual labour on the roads, using the simplest of tools. It employed around 90 people, many of them Roma. “They couldn’t work with computers, or do some business, they were simplest people on the labour market, but they have to do something because when they sit at home and do nothing they just start drinking, stealing and doing some criminal stuff,” he said. Kotleba’s programme was widely criticised for being both demeaning and pointlessly inefficient. It was soon shut down by the regional parliament – in Uhrík’s mind, because they were alarmed by its success. [...]

After being crushed at the polls, the party was liquidated by the courts in 2006 for its overtly anti-democratic nature. Kotleba took a brief break from politics, opening a shop in Banská Bystrica called “KKK – English fashion”. The three Ks were meant to represent the three Kotlebas, but the Ku Klux Klan reference was fairly obvious, especially given the clothing on sale – T-shirts and hoodies with far-right emblems and insignia. Kotleba and his followers regularly dressed in Hlinka Guard uniforms (making minor alterations, as the actual uniforms were illegal). “We are Slovaks, not Jews, and that is why we are not interested in the Jewish issue,” he said in 2009, when asked about the wartime deportations of the Jews from Slovakia by the very unit in whose uniform he was dressed. [...]

Kotleba did not have control of the regional parliament, which tried to frustrate his initiatives at every turn, but he set about making his influence felt wherever he could. He was particularly put out by programmes promoting human rights and tolerance in schools, and issued guidelines suggesting that instead of doing that, it would be better if the schools held beauty pageants. These were aimed at “girls learning to present themselves as ladies, and for them to see that there is still a world that values women’s dignity and spiritual beauty”. Some schools ignored the recommendations and still held the anti-extremism sessions; others did indeed hold beauty contests. Kotleba’s Kulturkampf continued in other areas, as he cancelled a contemporary dance festival he deemed to contain “pornography”, as well as an EU-funded project to resettle people with mental disabilities from a decaying communist-era facility into smaller supported housing units, and reintegrate them into society.

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Politico: Inside the EU, eastern approaches diverge

The formerly communist members of the EU club — from the Baltics in the north to Romania and Bulgaria at Europe’s edge — are diverging on big issues such as the rule of law and defense.

The weakening of their close ties could most immediately impact the negotiations over the next seven-year EU budget. The last time around, the Eastern bloc took a common position with other like-minded countries on regional funds, wresting billions from the EU in aid.[...]

The splits have emerged markedly only in recent months. A year ago, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called the Visegrad group — a club founded by Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary to advance the eastern cause in Europe and known by the acronym V4 — “one of the poles of the European Union.” Yet as the Hungarians and the Poles have since repeatedly clashed with Brussels over their alleged democratic backsliding, and Orbán resorts now to calling the EU “an empire,” Prague and Bratislava have been notable in their moderation. [...]

Tomáš Petříček, the Czech Republic’s newly appointed foreign minister, has distanced Prague from Orbán’s vision of “illiberal democracy” and pledged not to shrink from from criticizing other Visegrad group members. “Among partners and allies, it’s good practice not just to assure each other of mutual support but also to talk about things that we don’t just see as positive,” he told Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper last month.

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Politico: EU countries stop clock on Commission’s time change plan

His ministry is pushing for countries to be given until 2021 to decide whether they will opt for permanent summer or winter time. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker wanted that decision wrapped up by the end of March. [...]

Hofer wants the Commission to appoint a coordinator — a sort of EU-wide time lord — to oversee the reform, and Brussels to include a safeguard clause that would trigger new legislation should problems arise from scrapping the unified time change.

In Graz, three countries — Portugal, Greece and the United Kingdom — said they wanted to continue the annual shift to daylight saving, while Cyprus, the Netherlands, Ireland, France and Denmark said they had not yet reached a position.[...]

More than 80 percent of 4.6 million respondents to an EU survey backed removing the system under which clocks spring forward by an hour in March and fall back in October, with around 3 million responses coming from Germany.

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Haaretz: Synagogues Become Nightclubs in Eastern Europe

In a recent and controversial development in Eastern Europe, former Jewish houses of worship left abandoned after the Holocaust are being renovated for commercial ends by contractors who capitalize on their Jewish history and incorporate it into a brand. 

Critics view the businesses as exploitative cultural appropriation in the wake of a tragedy. Advocates argue it reflects respect and nostalgia for Jews in addition to providing a vehicle for at least some preservation of heritage sites.

The trend is especially visible over the past decade with the commercialization of several former synagogues and houses of worship. In 2013, Krakow’s Chewra Thilim was turned into a nightclub and, in 2016, into the Hevre bar, whose interior design highlights its Jewish past. [...]

It occurs also in Western Europe: A 207-year-old synagogue in the city of Deventer, in the eastern Netherlands, is in the process of becoming a restaurant whose design will reference its previous function, according to the new owners. [...]

Europe had some 17,000 synagogues before World War II, according to groundbreaking research published this year by the London-based Foundation for Jewish Heritage. But the foundation has been able to locate throughout the continent only 3,318 structures that have been known to function as synagogues, and just 762 are used as such today. [...]

Some noted that Israel and the United States have their fair share of deserted or defunct synagogues that have been turned into something else. The former Ansche Chesed Synagogue on New York’s Lower East Side is now an arts center. The Beth Abraham Synagogue in Auburn, Maine, was sold last year to a developer to be turned into apartments. 

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Politico: Brussels’ battle to tame Visegrad rebels

With countries in Central Europe facing the possibility of substantial cuts to their allotment of development funding in the EU’s next seven-year budget, the Commission has made it clear to leaders in both Prague and Bratislava that it’s not in their interest to lock arms with Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. [...]

But others from the region were cautious about advocating the alternative — an “intergovernmental” approach to EU decision-making that they fear would leave large countries such as Germany and France with even more influence. [...]

The main issue that continues to bind the Visegrad countries is migration, with all opposing quotas and other proposals that would compel them to accept significant numbers of refugees. Yet here, they are also supported by a host of other EU countries, including several from the south, confounding the Commission’s effort to forge a compromise to reform the current system.  [...]

Both Bratislava and Prague face their own challenges with populism and political corruption, but their political interests increasingly converge more with Germany and Austria, with which their economies are already closely intertwined, than with their former Warsaw Pact neighbors. That’s particularly true of Slovakia, which is the only country in the region that belongs to the euro. If the pair’s economies continue on the current trajectory, both are likely to join the ranks of the EU’s net payers during the bloc’s next long-term budget cycle. 

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Politico: Europe’s (not so) free press

When it came to the EU, they had other concerns: the misuse of defamation laws, the lack of protection for whistleblowers, the authoritarian mood in Hungary and Poland, media concentration in countries like Italy, or the impact of the decline of legacy media on pluralism and independence. [...]

Aside from the ever-present risk of terrorism, the rise of extremist parties and populist movements has made the job more dangerous. Reporters are heckled while covering street protests. Editorial writers are targeted on social media platforms. European political leaders take cues from Donald Trump, bashing the media and fanning hostility toward the press, essentially giving a green light to violence against journalists.

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, expressed his condolences after Kuciak’s murder and promised that justice would be served. But just a few months ago, he called journalists “anti-Slovak prostitutes.” Czech President Milos Zeman, meanwhile, appeared at a recent press conference in Prague with a Kalashnikov replica, with the word “journalists” on it. [...]

These organizations have already shown they do not like inquisitive journalists. In Italy, a founding member of the EU, some 200 journalists received police protection in 2017, according to RSF. Roberto Saviano, the author of television series “Gomorra,” a scathing reportage on the Naples’ mafia, has lived underground since 2006.

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VoxEurop: Immigration: Europeans favour intra-EU mobility

The 88th Eurobarometer survey, published in December 2017, finds that most Europeans (64 percent) have a positive opinion about immigration coming from other EU countries. In May 2015, as recently noted by the think-tank Bruegel, "51% of persons asked had a 'very' or 'somewhat' positive view of intra-EU immigration. 40 percent expressed a 'very' or 'somewhat' negative view, while 9 percent had no opinion. Since then, support for intra-EU immigration has continued to climb".

According to Bruegel this means that "more than two-thirds of European citizens have a positive view of the free movement of people within the EU". This feeling is shared across almost all European countries – even the UK, committed to leaving the EU – with the only exception being Cyprus, where 50 percent of residents think the opposite. [...]

"Luxemburgers, Irish and Swedes are the most favorable to intra-EU migrations, and they also remain relatively supportive of extra-EU immigration. More than half of Spanish, Portuguese and British citizens also support extra-EU immigration. [...] Conversely, support is very weak in certain countries of central and eastern Europe (Czechia, Slovakia, Latvia, Hungary and Estonia)", notes the Brussels research institute. It adds that this perception of extra-EU immigration did not deteriorate during the refugee crisis, remaining more or less stable.

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Political Critique: Where does equality start?

It is the directive concerning unfair commercial practices, which, makes it obligatory to place the product’s ingredients on the label. A product with the same name, but not always the same ingredients, can be sold in different countries but only under the condition that it is properly labelled. Meglena Kuneva, the Bulgarian Commissioner for Consumer Protection from 2007 to 2010, admitted that using well-known brands for selling low-quality products could mislead the consumers, but in her opinion, such situations should be addressed individually by state legislatures or offices for consumer protection. [...]

Politicians in the Czech Republic, the most Eurosceptic of V4 societies, are particularly eager to attack the EU on the issue of food quality. The state parliament has debated this problem on several occasions. In November 2016, Simeon Karamazov (conservative Civic Democratic Party) argued that the EU should focus on the problems of its citizens, and not foreigners, as it did during the refugee crisis. In March 2017, Marek Černoch from the populist Úsvit (Dawn), stated that Western corporations view the Czech Republic as a second-class country and “the landfill of Europe”. [...]

The V4 countries’ complaints did not go unheard. Commissioner Jourova and her superior, Jean-Claude Juncker, admitted that the problem is real and the Commission must play a role in solving it. Both of them are treating this issue as a political challenge and an opportunity to improve the relations with the Visegrad Group after the battles about the relocation of refugees and the still ongoing conflict over the breach of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. [...]

Slovakians were the first to conduct research on this issue. In 2011 they compared food products sold in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe (including Poland). The analysis of the Slovak Association of Consumers (partly financed by the EU) uncovered differences not only between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ union, but also among countries in the East. For example, Coca-Cola sold in the West, in Poland and the Czech Republic contained natural sugar (sucrose) but in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania – isoglucose – a cheaper, poorer quality sweetener.

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Politico: Europe tries to clear the air

Bulgaria, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council for the first half of 2018, said it would make air quality “a focus” of its presidency. The country has experienced the problem first hand: It has the highest death rate related to air pollution in the bloc, with over 13,000 premature fatalities a year linked to fine particulate pollution — out of nearly 400,000 for the whole EU. [...]

Dirty air is a Continent-wide problem. Central and Eastern European countries struggle with dust and fine particulate pollution, where low-quality domestic heating units are often a major source of those pollutants. And Western European countries are recording high levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant closely linked to diesel vehicle exhaust, in their cities.

Five of them — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. — were given a final warning in early 2017 by the Commission, the last step before being taken to the European Court of Justice. [...]

In one of them, France’s highest court gave the government until March 31 to come up with tougher measures to tackle high levels of nitrogen dioxide. In the U.K., the leading NGO on this issue, ClientEarth, launched its third legal challenge against the government’s air-quality plans in November, with a decision expected in the coming months.

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CityLab: Europe Says Uber Is Officially a Taxi Service

Uber is a taxi company. That’s the ruling today from the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, which interprets the union’s laws and ensures their application across all member states.

Uber, of course, has long resisted that label. It presents itself as a digital platform for connecting people, rather than as a taxi service. But a Barcelona taxi association  challenged that claim in court in 2014, frustrated that Uber’s revenues had been partly and unfairly bolstered by worse pay and conditions for drivers. And Wednesday’s resounding judgement against Uber, who sought to appeal the Spanish ruling at the ECJ, is a bombshell. Not only does it mean the company faces far stricter regulation across the E.U., it also undercuts the very way Uber has tried to define itself globally. [...]

More broadly, there’s a degree of existential threat in the ECJ decision. Uber has largely attempted to sail above the notion that it is a regular company employing actual humans, enabling it to deny such basic employee necessities as sick and holiday pay. Wednesday’s ruling bursts that bubble. Uber’s app-based hailing system may have been the ground-breaking key to its success, but the suggestion that it is not a transportation company is increasingly hard to sustain.

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openDemocracy: How Mario Centeno could change Europe

Two years ago Mario Centeno was yet another finance minister of the Eurozone trying to convince his European counterparts that austerity was not working. Portugal was emerging from a severe economic crisis and an equally challenging bailout. Pensions were slashed, education suffered a 23 per cent cut and unemployment reached 17.5 per cent in 2013. The former centre-right government zealously followed the treatment recommended by the IMF and the European Union. But the results were far from satisfactory. Deep cuts were not after all the answer to improve our economy and the life of our citizens. However, things changed dramatically when Antonio Costa´s government assumed office in 2015. After finding an unorthodox formula to govern, the socialists showed Europe that there is an alternative: the solution lies, politically, in reaching broader consensus. Economically, in boosting demand, not suppressing it. [...]

Mr. Centeno’s metamorphosis from outsider to European leader started when Portugal left the EU´s excessive deficit procedure in May. The decision gave Portugal margin to ease austerity and to push away the threat of future sanctions. The decisive moment for Mr. Centeno, however, came the day after. Mr. Schäuble, then Germany´s finance minister, called him the “Ronaldo of Ecofin” and praised him in public. Many understood Mr. Schäuble words as an endorsement. However, few believed Portugal´s finance minister could be on his away to replace Jeroen Dijsselbloem. [...]

Every leadership position in Europe is chaired by the European People´s Party. The exception is the Eurogroup. And there was a gentlemen agreement between conservatives and socialists ensuring that the Eurogroup should be presided by the latter. There was also consensus around the idea that the President of the Eurogroup should come from a smaller country. Another decisive factor was the electoral calendar in Italy – elections will take place during the Spring – and the political instability in Spain. Nonetheless, Portugal´s role as Europe´s success case was a key factor. Whether we like it or not, economic results determine the perception of politicians and governments. And financial stability in a country used to the contrary is a sign of competence. And a synonym of political success, even if the results in other areas are not favourable at all.  

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Politico: EU to unveil military pact projects

An essential element of the pact is that it promotes a two-speed approach, in that only groups of member countries support certain projects. For example, a European Medical Command has been pushed by Germany with the support of the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Romania, Sweden and Slovakia.

The project that has the most support is a Dutch plan for increased military mobility. Twenty-one other countries back the idea and the Commission has already put forward a proposal. [...]

According to the list, Germany is the lead country on the crisis response project, but “it’s a game between the French and the Germans,” said a diplomat closely involved in the discussions. “It’s actually more of a French thing and it has an ultimate link with Macron’s idea to create an intervention force.” [...]

However, the list also shows that Poland will take part in two projects (military mobility and radio interoperability) and that Lithuania is the leading country in a “cyber rapid response team.”

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Politico: Bratislava is for losers

It’s been a rough few weeks for Slovakia. First, its capital is passed up as the new host of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) after Brexit in favor of Amsterdam. Then its finance minister, Peter Kažimír, resigns from the race for the Eurogroup leadership — a position that would have given the country a real seat at the table, for once.

Slovaks reacted to the bad news from Brussels with overblown self-flagellation. Bratislava, much of Slovakia’s commentariat agreed, was a terrible place to live — who would want to move there from London? And Kažimír was an awful candidate who is not doing enough to stabilize public finances at home (notwithstanding this year’s deficit, expected at around 1.29 percent of GDP) and has not been able to eradicate tax fraud in the country. [...]

There are grounds for optimism. Neither outcome — no matter how disappointing — sparked the outrage at “traitors” or out-of-touch cosmopolitan elites that usually follows controversial decisions out of Brussels. Not even Slovak politicians who harbor very little affection for the EU used the occasion to criticize the bloc. [...]

Slovakia will never be a large country and wield a voice comparable to that of Poland, let alone Germany or France. But it can be an influential country if it matches a commitment to EU integration with effective domestic reforms to update its public administration, health care and education systems. And if Slovak leaders also have a clear vision and strategy of what they are trying to accomplish in Europe.

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