The Diplomat: China Doesn’t Understand Europe, and It Shows

 While his tour was designed to improve China’s post-pandemic image in Europe, some of Wang’s statements only made things worse for China. In Norway, while answering a question about the Nobel Peace Prize and Hong Kong, Wang said that China won’t allow the politicization of the Nobel Prize by interfering in China’s internal affairs — a response that many in the West read as a Chinese threat against awarding the Nobel Prize to Hong Kong protesters. Later, while in Germany, Wang criticized the Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil’s visit to Taiwan and warned that it would incur a “heavy price” — another threat against a European country for doing something considered normal in a democratic state.[...]

China’s run of European mistakes started in 2012, when it decided to set up the 16+1 mechanism with the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, among them both EU members and non-members. Back then, China’s decision was watched with suspicion in Brussels and with every step China has taken in the CEE region the European Union’s fear of division has increased. While the EU seems to have gotten over the 2018 Visegrad (V4) moment, when China inaugurated a V4+China format for meetings with Hungary, Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia, and Wang even praised the V4 as the EU’s “most dynamic force,” things changed a lot in 2019. Two crucial moments were Italy’s decision to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Greece’s addition to the 16+1. [...]

Moments like these have shown that China doesn’t understand the EU at all. While world powers no longer create agreements like the Treaty of Tordesillas, the idea of spheres of influence still exists in their minds. Sixteen formerly communist CEE countries teaming up with a communist great power set off alarm bells in Brussels. The EU doesn’t want any new “Berlin Walls” and it definitely doesn’t want to swap out Russian influence with Chinese in the CEE region, creating a new Iron Curtain. The European Union’s fear of division was mainly generated by China, which failed to understand how sensitive and important this subject is for Brussels. [...]

Sometimes, China doesn’t even seem to understand the basics of the European Union. The EU is a supranational entity, which receives its mandate from all 27 EU member-states, yet remains separate from the national institutions of each member state. The members of the European Parliament, although they come from each EU country, represent not their countries, but the EU. China’s failure to grasp the bloc’s basic structure became clear when it scolded the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after an Estonian member of the European Parliament went to Taiwan.

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Social Europe: Migration And Forgetting In Central Europe

These effects have been most noticeable in East-Central Europe, where they have fuelled the rise of an “axis of illiberalism.” While intolerance is a problem across the post-communist space as a whole, Victor Orbán’s Fidesz and Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) parties have succeeded in creating regimes that combine elections and market economics with illiberal elements, including gerrymandering, the manipulation of voting rules and control of the media. These all come with the rejection of individual human rights and the rights of social minorities. Known as the Visegrád Group, these parties have fueled a counter-revolution against “Western European dogmas” of tolerance and multiculturalism. [...]

The success of this movement in post-communist Europe – as well as the sympathetic reception they have received on the far right across the continent – testifies to a shocking historical amnesia. As the generations of Europeans with personal memories of total war – as well as the massive transfers of people that followed – pass away, Europe risks repeating the mistakes of the past. At a time when migrants and stateless refugees have once again become “the most symptomatic group in contemporary politics,” we must remember the lessons of the 1930s, which testify to the importance of ensuring the liberal protection of both human and minority rights. [...]

This problem dates back to the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789), which links the “the Rights of Man” – human rights, in modern parlance – to the “will of the people” through the concept of citizenship. While this system works for so called “state peoples,” i.e. nationals who have their own state, it does not protect unwanted individuals and minorities from “having no community” or from having their citizenship stripped away “quite democratically – namely by majority decision.” This realization is the basis for Arendt’s call for the protection of “a right to have rights […] a right to belong to some kind of organized community.” Her key insight is that the killing of the “juridical person” during the nationalist furore of the inter-war crisis was the first step towards the larger atrocities of World War II.

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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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Political Critique: No orphans allowed in Czechia

Czech anti-immigration sentiments got lifted up from the domain of quacks, wannabe Nazis and populists into actual policy when Andrej Babiš woke up one day and realized his party’s popularity dropped a couple percent; a situation very easily remedied by causing an international faux pas by telling Italy he will not accept a single immigrant (because look what they did to your country). His resolve has been tested for the last few weeks with a full-on media barrage regarding the proposed acceptance of fifty orphans from Syria – an issue on which he managed to change his firm opinion only about five or six times a week. [...]

And here is the thing: those fifty orphans could seriously help us there. The Czech Republic has mostly managed to avoid EU scrutiny due to Babiš playing chameleon and changing colors based on whether he was speaking to home or foreign audience. But it seems the chameleon is going senile and cannot shift its complexion as fast as it once could – and sometimes, like in Italy, the true colors shine through. Now, viewed from the outside, there is an opportunity to put his money where his mouth is and prove that he is dedicated to a common European cause. The only problem is that, back home, he has just announced zero tolerance for immigrants. What to do, what to say? [...]

Putting aside the rather distressing implication that a human life loses value with age (something the masterpiece of applied necromancy posing as our current President should get through its brain, whichever canopic jar that might be stowed away in), this first attack was deflected rather easily by pointing out that we’d have our choice of orphans to accept; no one was talking a specific group of children. This did not stop plenty of other parties to join the fun; the xenophobic SPD calling the initiative “pseudohumanistic cries of the neo-marxists” (given the rhetorical capabilities of the average SPD member, one can only assume a dictionary was heavily involved in the creative process behind that phrase) and a party called Czech Sovereignty (nope, never heard of them either) outright accused the orphans of being ISIS fighters – amazing foresight since no specific children were chosen.

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Haaretz: Splitting the EU: Israel’s Tightening Alliance With Central Europe’s Nationalist Leaders

hese two countries, led by ultra-nationalist right-wing leaders, have been challenging the EU in recent years, using the massive wave of migration in 2015 and the rise in global terror to cast doubt on the common liberal values on which the EU was founded. Hungary, led by Orban, is the extreme symbol of the opposition. During his three terms in office Orban has led a campaign to restrict democracy in his country through a legislative assault. This included limits on civil society and on media freedom of expression, as well restrictions imposed on the courts. Part of this campaign over the last two years has included attacks against the Hungarian-born Jewish-American billionaire George Soros, who donates money to human rights groups in Hungary. Netanyahu also attacks Soros as part of his campaign against left-wing NGOs. The Hungarian government’s inflammatory campaign is perceived by many Hungarian Jews as replete with anti-Semitic elements. [...]

Israel has been exploiting this internal, complex and delicate European dissent in recent years in order to change the way decisions about its policies are made in the EU. Observers in Brussels point to a chilling effect created by the alliance between Israel and the V-4 on the ability to issue joint statements in the name of all 28 EU members. “Netanyahu succeeded in using this group in order to undermine European unity,” they say. This effect is not limited to just these four countries. There are similar ties with Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Cyprus and even Greece. “When the Union wants to issue something in the name of all its members, as happens in foreign affairs, there are specific cases in which Hungary objects or demands a softening of the criticism of Israel, to the extent that other countries cannot agree, so that the declaration is void,” say these observers. [...]

Dr Nimrod Goren, the head of the think tank, Mitvim, the Israel Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, believes that fostering relations with these countries at the expense of larger liberal European countries is a mistake which harms important friendships. “Israel has traditionally preferred strengthening ties with specific countries, but in the past it recognized the importance of its ties with the EU, in terms of common interests and values. This was never politically controversial. In recent years there has been a change and the ties with the Visegrad group reflect this well. The choice of these countries attests to Israel’s moving away from the values of a liberal democracy. The Economist’s democracy index ranks all these countries lower than Israel. These should not be Israel’s allies in a continent which prides itself on democratic ideals and human rights. Germany, Britain and France are much more important for ensuring Israel’s security and for fulfilling its national interests. Choosing the V-4 distances Israel even more from the EU, which is investing a lot in contending with challenges posed by these countries. It also contradicts Israel’s efforts to fight extreme right-wing elements in other European countries, as well as Israel’s ties with Cyprus and Greece, which consider democracy a strong binding factor to Israel. Israel should diversify its foreign policy but without losing its moral compass.”

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Haaretz: Angela Merkel Is Losing to the Orban-Trump-Netanyahu Camp

It was a showdown that Merkel, backed up by Germany’s economic might and a near consensus among EU leaders, was winning. In early 2015, she visited Budapest and forced Orban to cancel a tax his government had levied on German companies. But two weeks later, the Russian president visited Budapest as well, and Merkel should have read the signs. She was about to make a series of decisions that would lead to her current predicament.

Throughout 2015, she led the EU’s tough line against the cash-strapped Syriza government in Greece. Merkel insisted on severe austerity measures in return for a bailout. She broke Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, despite the referendum in which a large majority of Greek voters rejected the EU’s terms. The price was bolstering her domineering and coercive image, and that of the EU. A year later, things would end very differently in another referendum. [...]

In 2016, in a series of meetings with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Merkel refused to grant any concessions on the EU’s freedom-of-movement principle for immigrants. Without her support, Cameron had no chance with the EU, and though he continued to support remaining in the union, immigration was to become a main issue used by Brexit-supporters, motivating 52 percent of British voters to support leaving on June 23. [...]

In three years, Merkel has gone from leader of Europe to being almost isolated. Even French President Emmanuel Macron, nominally her ally, has been discreetly distancing himself. The photograph of Merkel at this month’s G-7 summit confronting Trump made liberal hearts soar across the Western world, but it also underlined how the West is now divided into two camps. And the Orban-Trump-Netanyahu camp is swiftly gaining ground.

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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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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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Haaretz: Netanyahu’s Speedy Absolution for Austria’s neo-Nazis

Establishing ties with Germany remained a sensitive issue for decades. The deal with Adenauer included not only financial reparations (and secret arms deals) but also a speech to the Bundestag in which the chancellor acknowledged Germany’s sins against the Jews. Ben-Gurion also made sure that the Israeli government was not alone in making peace with Germany; his moves were coordinated with World Jewish Congress President Nahum Goldmann, who was a partner to the negotiations with Bonn. The ground rules for atonement were established. For a state or a political entity to absolve itself of its anti-Jewish past, it would have to publicly repudiate its sins and prove itself to be pro-Israel. Jerusalem’s stamp of approval would not be sufficient; it would need the blessing of the Diaspora as well. 

These standards would remain. When, in 1986, 53 percent of Austrian voters chose as their president the former Wehrmacht officer Kurt Waldheim, who had been tainted by his Nazi-era associations with the SS and war crimes committed in the Balkans, Israel downgraded its diplomatic relations with Vienna. The same happened in 2000, when the Freedom Party became part of the ruling coalition.[...]

TIn his meeting with the Visegrad Group (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia) in July, Netanyahu felt comfortable enough among friends to describe the EU’s policy towards Israel as “a joke” and “actually crazy.” He was relying on the leaders of these four countries to help Europe “decide if it wants to live and thrive or if it wants to shrivel and disappear” and the way to do that was “a different policy toward Israel.” To get these nations to stand by Israel in the European forums, Netanyahu has been prepared to overlook the inclusion of racist politicians and Holocaust revisionism of the Polish government and the anti-Semitic tone of the Hungarian government’s campaign against Jewish financier George Soros. Israel’s silence under Netanyahu has been in contradiction to that of major local and international Jewish organizations – just as he has ignored the distress of American Jewish over U.S. President Donald Trump’s embrace of anti-Semitic white supremacists. Now he is looking to the new Kurz-Strache government in Vienna to add Austria to his pro-Israel coalition in the EU.

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Al Jazeera: Europe far right hails Trump, slams EU, Islam, migrants

Far right leaders promised to build a new Europe without the EU, as they rallied against Islam and praised US President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policy at a meeting in Prague over the weekend. [...]

"We do like diversity but I like the Dutch to be Dutch, the Czechs to be Czech, I like the French to be French and I like the Italians to be Italians."

Wilders, meanwhile, rejected Islam as "totalitarian ideology" and warned that the continent would be overrun by Muslims. [...]

"In the regional sense, the post-communist countries are particularly fragile and have always been, with the arrival with the now perceived danger from foreigners and Muslims," Jan Culik, a lecturer in Czech studies at the University of Glasgow, told Al Jazeera. "They have very little immunity to xenophobia and now the Czech Republic and Poland are among the worst in this regard.

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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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Politico: Visegrad 4 cools on Europe, and each other

Tensions within the so-called Visegrad Group burst into the open last week over the question of Europe’s cross-border labor rules, as Poland and Hungary refused to follow Slovakia and the Czech Republic in endorsing a French-led compromise to tighten regulations on employees posted to work in the EU outside their home countries.

A bigger worry to those hoping to maintain a semblance of unity is that Prague could turn away from the alliance under populist oligarch Andrej Babiš, whose party won the parliamentary election on October 20-21. Though Babiš is not as ideological as Poland’s current right-wing leadership and doesn’t have a poisonous history with EU institutions like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, he’s given little indication of what his foreign policy will look like. [...]

“The attempt to turn this club into a counterweight failed,” said Milan Nič, an analyst with the German Council on Foreign Relations who previously worked for Slovakia’s foreign ministry. “They’re too divided on fundamental issues to push a common agenda, but they want to also prove that it’s not over. All four need the club.” [...]

Macron argues the current rules make it too easy for employers to avoid paying social security contributions in countries such as France, where the payments are much higher than in Central Europe. A number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, however, worry that the reform, which EU ministers approved by a qualified majority, undermines the single market and will hit their citizens particularly hard. In addition to Hungary and Poland, Lithuania and Latvia opposed the measure.  

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Politico: Why Europe isn’t worried by Austria’s right tilt (but should be)

Sebastian Kurz — the 31-year-old leader of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) — is set to lead a right-leaning coalition that includes the far-right Freedom Party. The last time Austria’s populists won more than a quarter of the vote and played kingmaker, in 1999, the other EU members isolated Vienna through bilateral sanctions. But what shocked EU leaders then is barely causing a stir now.

In part, this is simply because the inclusion of the far right is not as shocking as it was 20 years ago. Since then, governments across Europe — from Hungary to Italy — have turned rightward and a host of mainstream political leaders have adopted anti-immigrant rhetoric in an effort to keep the political fringes at bay. [...]

Sebastian Kurz’s campaign rhetoric was barely distinguishable from that of far-right FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache, according to Ruth Wodak, a veteran discourse analyst of the far right. In his speeches and statements, the young ÖVP leader referred only to “migrants” and chose not to mention those fleeing persecution and deserving protection under asylum law. [...]

The next Austrian government may be unlikely to go the way of Hungary — where the government used a referendum in 2016 to spend an unprecedented amount of public money on a campaign against migration that caused public support for asylum to drop by half. But a new spate of referendums in Austria could slow down EU decision-making and block progress in Brussels.  

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Politico: Prague poised to turn away from Brussels

Recent polls predict the maverick ANO movement and its founder, former Finance Minister Andrej Babiš, will be the election’s biggest winner with some 25 percent of the vote. Support for Babiš is largely due to his vow to fight political corruption — despite the fact he currently faces charges of subsidy fraud. But he has also denounced EU-imposed migrant quotas and “EU meddling” in Czech politics. [...]

Czech voters are deeply skeptical about both the euro and the EU project itself. According to a 2017 survey by the Czech Public Opinion Research Center, only 18 percent of Czechs “strongly agree” the country should be a member of the bloc, while 38 percent “somewhat agree” — by far the lowest support for EU membership among members of the so-called Visegrad Group of Central European nations, which also includes Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Another poll by the same organization found that only 21 percent of Czechs are in favor of adopting the euro. [...]

Other party leaders have kept the door open to governing with ANO — while insisting they do not want Babiš to be prime minister. But Babiš has repeatedly insisted that he will not let someone else take the reins if ANO wins the most seats in parliament, and there is no obvious alternative candidate within his party for the premiership. He also has an ally in President Miloš Zeman, who is likely to throw his weight behind a coalition headed by the ANO leader.

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Social Europe: Schrödinger’s Immigrant

When Central and Eastern European leaders try to explain why they do not want to accept refugees, they tend to contradict one another. Some insist that refugees take jobs from natives, which implies that refugees are hard workers; others complain that refugees rely on welfare benefits, which suggests that they work too little. [...]

According to the European Social Survey, there is little agreement in Europe about whether refugees and migrants take existing jobs, or actually create new ones (see chart above). At Odlišnost (Distinction), a collective of academics and journalists, we have reviewed 20 empirical studies to determine the effect that immigrants had on native workers in Europe and the Middle East between 1990 and 2015. All told, we found little evidence to support the claim that accepting a reasonable number of refugees and migrants from developing countries deprives native-born workers of employment. [...]

But high- and low-skill migrants alike contribute to the efficient division of labor in their host countries, because language and other differences make it harder for them to compete with locals. The studies we examined show that, in terms of wages, immigrants from close neighboring countries put a small amount of downward pressure on the wages of low-skill natives. With immigrants from afar, however, this negative effect disappears. [...]

It turns out that asylum applicants typically have little to no knowledge of a country’s labor-market conditions or welfare benefits before they arrive. Rather, they are usually guided by the circumstances of their journey. And when they do consciously choose a country, they tend to look for places where their compatriots or relatives already live, or where they already know the language, owing to past colonial ties.

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Politico: Unity of Central Europe’s Visegrad Group under strain

They may well be still here but they don’t all seem to be in the same place politically. Even the lineup for Thursday’s gathering suggested as much. It was billed as a foreign ministers’ meeting — but, of the Visegrad countries, only Poland and Hungary had foreign ministers present. Slovakia and the Czech Republic sent state secretaries. [...]

The Czech Republic is planning to request observer status at meetings of eurozone finance ministers. Meanwhile, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said a couple of weeks ago that the “fundamentals” of his policy were being “close to the [EU] core, close to France, to Germany.” [...]

Petr Ježek, a Czech member of the European Parliament representing the centrist ANO movement, which leads in opinion polls ahead of a general election in October, said the Visegrad Group was a “useful format for regional cooperation” in the long term. But, he added, “I’m afraid that the government in Poland and to some extent the one in Hungary are not the ones one should team up with too much.” [...]

“Visegrad is not the only pillar on which the Czech Republic builds its Central European policy,” said Tomas Kafka, director of the Central Europe Department at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, citing the country’s strategic dialogue with Germany and its so-called “Slavkov cooperation” with Slovakia and Austria.

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Political Critique: V4 residents are confused about the EU and their place in it – and we have the data to prove it

In recent weeks, several polling institutes released their data on attitudes towards the EU in the V4 states. We collected some of them in an attempt to find common patterns and draw some conclusions – whether with success or not, judge for yourself.First, let’s have a look at the Eurobarometer data, collected several times a year by the EU itself. In general, respondents expressed trust in the EU: two separate surveys reported a rate of approval of between 46-30% and 57-35%. According to the first survey however, even the most EU-enthusiastic Hungarians are more anti rather than pro – but the region overall is nevertheless more optimistic about the union’s future than not. [...]

Back to Eurobarometer. Comparing the optimistic outlooks for the future to the respondents’ trust in their own governments seemingly confirms the slight dominance of EU-enthusiasm: the less a country trusts their government, the more they tend to trust the EU. Except the Czechs, who trust no one.

True though, that “trust” is pretty vague – and the surveys do enquire about attitudes more specifically, too. For example, the V4’s vast majority would support a common EU foreign policy (except for the Czechs, who are only mildly intrigued), and the support for a common security and defence policy is even stronger. [...]

So here’s a disappointingly banal conclusion: People are confused. The stark differences between polls attest to how unstable the political discourse – on the future of the EU, on refugees, etc. – is in the region. Domestic events, such as the mind-numbing hostility and ubiquity of anti-EU and anti-Soros propaganda in Hungary, or the sweeping wave of nation-wide anti-government protests in Poland, are also showing limited results.

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Political Critique: Farcical Political Crisis Shakes Czech Republic

Social Democratic Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka was trying to save his face and the sinking support of his party when he announced the whole cabinet’s resignation on May 2. With only six months to go before regular parliamentary elections in October, the ruling Social Democrats know well that it won’t be them, but their coalition partner, the movement ANO [Yes], led by billionaire Andrej Babiš, who will be putting together the next government. The past three-and-a-half years have been marked by constant fighting between Sobotka and Babiš, his Finance Minister and deputy. Mired in one scandal after another, Babiš’s reputation seems immune to any of the accusations piling on him – his movement is currently polling at around 30%, leaving all other parties well behind. Now, however, Babiš faces accusations of large-scale tax evasion, as well clear indications he tried to influence media he formerly owned thanks to leaked recordings, circumstances the Prime Minister claims he could no longer igonore. Sobotka’s initial resignation can thus be seen as a final attack on his coalition partner and simultaneous foe. Providing an explanation on Wednesday of why he did not simply dismiss Babiš and keep the current government in place, Sobotka stated he did not wish to give the Finance Minister an opportunity to turn himself into a “martyr” and thus gain even more political sympathies from his electorate. [...]

The coalition of the Social Democrats, Babiš’s ANO, and its third, ineffectual member, the Christian Democrats, has ruled the country with stability, and apart from its stubborn refusal of refugee quotas, it has generally not given the rest of Europe a headache the way its neighbours have. [...]

And it is Zeman who’s the real culprit in turning the current political crisis into a farce that not even the screenwriters of The Thick of It could envision. Having announced the cabinet’s resignation on Wednesday, Sobotka made his way to Prague Castle, the President’s seat, on Thursday – not to tender his resignation, as he announced that morning, but to first discuss the serious governmental crisis with the President. Zeman however openly chose to pretend he had not received the most recent message and prepared a resignation ceremonial, together with a press conference, for Sobotka. In effect, Zeman accepted a resignation the PM had not yet tendered. The Prime Minister, taken aback, was momentarily lost for words. To make his humiliation complete, Zeman vulgarly used his walking stick to point Sobotka to his place behind the microphone, moreover addressing him with the informal Czech equivalent of the French tu as opposed to the standard vous in official situations. The PM bravely held his ground, but once he started to speak about the cause of the crisis – Minister Babiš’s dodgy dealings, President Zeman, in an act of unprecedented rudeness, walked out of the press conference.

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Political Critique: Andrej Babiš: Change as Status Quo

Shortly after being elected, Donald Trump phoned three Eastern European politicians: the leader of the Polish PiS Jarosław Kaczyński, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán and the Czech President Miloš Zeman. The new American President has (correctly) realized that the Eastern edge of the European Union is a fertile ground for regimes that share his rhetoric, so he invited their representatives to Washington in mutual delight: these three leaders look up to Trump and finally they could boast international recognition, as until now, their anti-liberal views have not been exactly popular in the West. [...]

Ten years ago, the Hungarian philosopher Gáspár Miklós Tamás called the Central European mix of authoritarianism, hard asocial capitalism, and a formal take on democracy “post-fascism.” “Fascism is defined by denying the civic laws of certain groups of people, which is already happening,” said Tamás on Czech radio, supplying the example of criminalization of the homeless in Budapest. He stresses that the term post-fascism concerns the heading of society as a whole – individual politicians or parties need not be fascist or post-fascist in order to shift their society towards what Tamás considers post-fascism. After all, there is no perfectly satisfactory way to label the current wave of politics veering away from liberal values: the ultra-right tendencies (extreme nationalism, cultural conservatism and social darwinism) is just one of the many facets of this trend. And it is one of the least visible with Babiš. [...]

What does make Babiš similar to his authoritarian neighbors (or Trump) are his methods that require a center of power – primarily owning media or at least being able to influence it. In Poland, Kaczyński can lean on the Catholic Church and its influence, including sympathetic, conservative media like Radio Maryja or his own schools for future journalists. Kaczyński had access to this PiS-friendly support structure even before he won the elections and started subjugating state television. In Hungary, Orbán’s Fidész has created a structure of clientele networks of interconnecting state, party and business subjects. These shift the balance of power towards Orbán and decisively influence his media image. Babiš can rely on one of the biggest companies in the Czech Republic, which has – right before elections – also happened to eat up the biggest publishing house in the country. Babiš placed his people as the heads of the two biggest newspapers in the country – the professional loyalist Jaroslav Plesl at MF Dnes and his friend István Léko at People’s News. The first openly sympathizes with Trump, the second with Orbán.

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Politico: Why Kaczyński sent the Polish government on a suicide mission

Detached as he may be from political reality outside Poland, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) must have known he had no chance of blocking the pro-European former prime minister’s path to a second term, least of all by putting forward a bruising MEP who has never been a head of government or even a full minister. [...]

This might have been an attempt to split the EU and pull it in a more nationalist direction after Britain’s vote to leave the union. Kaczyński has had some success in reviving the Visegrad Four group of central European countries — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — as a vehicle to rebuff Germany on the issue of migration and to resist censure from Brussels over his government’s emasculation of the constitutional court. [...]

But even some right-wing commentators usually sympathetic to PiS criticized the government for waging a hopeless fight, arguing it had damaged the prospect of building an axis of eastern countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Adriatic under Polish-Hungarian leadership as a counter-weight to the Franco-German dominance of the EU. Some also argued that the debacle showed Kaczyński’s ineffectiveness outside Poland.

If Kaczyński were a more skilled player of the EU political game, he might have used opposition to Tusk’s reappointment to extract concessions from Germany on issues of money or power. But German officials say the way the Poles handled the matter, despite Merkel’s political gesture of going to meet Kaczyński, who holds no official government position, when she visited Warsaw last month, has removed any inclination in Berlin to take a conciliatory line towards Poland.

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