An Awkward 6 Months in Prague

The end of the year is fast approaching, and with it the EU reign of SuperSarko is coming to an end as well. On December 31 at Midnight France will pass the rotating EU presidency to the Czech Republic, which will hold the position for the next six months. With the ratification of the EU reform treaty still up in the air, it will be an incredibly volatile time to hold the leadership position. And with the Czech president a notorious EU-hater, it's going to be an awkward few months

It is perhaps ironic that the EU reform treaty is set to abolish the cumbersome rotating EU presidency, which is handed off to a new country every six months. During this critical time, it could be the holder of the rotating presidency that kills the treaty.

The tension that the next six months will bring was in evidence at a recent lunch for European ambassadors to the Czech Republic. As recounted by the Economist, the guest of honour at the meeting, Czech president Vaclav Klaus, made the meeting extreemly uncomfortable. After being politely asked about how the Czech EU presidency might handle various EU policies, Klaus responded with an angry diatribe about how since he is against the EU's existence, he has no reason to answer such questions. He then followed this with an angry speech about how the Czech presidency is irrelevant anyway because the EU is always dominated by the big founding nations no matter who holds the presidency. He even turned to the envoy from Slovenia and accused that country's presidency for the first half of this year of being a farce.

Now it's important to point out that the Czech presidency is a largely ceremonial position with no direct power over domestic or foreign policy, as many in the Czech government have been quick to point out. But his symbolic importance is huge. At a time when Irish millionaires are seeking to build a pan-European movement against the EU reform treaty, the fact that the current ceremonial figurehead of the EU himself is against it is not insignificant. Comments like the ones made at this recent lunch will become a rallying cry for Eurosceptics across the continent over the next six months, and Vaclav Klaus will be the hero of the anti-treaty movement. Klaus had a well-publicized dinner with millionaire Irish anti-Lisbon campaigner Declan Ganley in November, and he still refuses to fly the EU flag over Prague Castle.

My former professor while I was studying in Prague, Jiri Pehe, told the BBC this week that the EU "has the right to be worried a bit about the Czech presidency." Pehe, an advisor to the first post-communist Czech president Vaclav Havel, should know. The Czech Republic itself is only 19 years old, and it's only been a member of the EU since 2002. "This 19-year-old teenager is now taking over a bus with 26 other people on board," Pehe told the BBC. "Maybe the rest of the European Union would be OK if this particular teenager was driving the bus on an empty road with no intersections ahead, but I think we are facing very difficult traffic, with several complicated intersections."

So it's perhaps not surprising that French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been reluctant to hand over the reigns to his Czech counterpart. Over the past few weeks there have been rumours of a secret French plan for Sarkozy to continue hosting European summits after the new year, inviting only those countries that use the euro. This plan, according to insiders would allow Sarko to maintain control if Klaus attempts to "sabotage" the EU during the Czech presidency. Recently an official from the Elysee Palace used that exact word to describe the process.

It will probably become clear within the first month of 2009 how Klaus, and the Czech government, intend to proceed with the presidency. But a confrontational tact would throw the EU into pandemonium just as it is desperately seeking to get the reform treaty ratified. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy year.

Seasons Greetings from New York

I just wanted to post a quick note to wish everyone happy holidays. I'm in New York at the moment, home with the family for Christmas and New Years. It's nice to be home, I haven't really been back to New York properly for a year. It's amazing the amount of sales here at the moment, particularly considering its the days just before Christmas.

Other than that everything seems mostly the same here, the post-Obama-election streets aren't yet paved with gold. A lot of my friends here have been laid off, which is disconcerting. Of course it's like that all over, not just here. I'll spend New Years here and then it's back to Zurich for me. And after that, well that has yet to be determined! January will be a time to make some plans.

For Once, Europe is United Over Gay Rights

A major milestone took place at the UN yesterday. Sixty years after the organisation adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 68 countries signed a non-binding delcaration sponsored by France and the Netherlands demanding the worldwide decriminalisation of homosexuality.

This was the first time that any gay rights issue had been pressed in a large motion at the United Nations, and it was interesting to see that the body was just about evenly split, with 68 countries supporting and 60 countries rejecting the declaration. The nations which rejected the the resolution were largely Arab and African states, with one notable exception: the only Western country to refuse to sign the declaration was the United States.

This is perhaps not surprising considering that homosexuality was only nationally decriminalised in the US five years ago. The Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 ruled that a Texas law making homosexual sex a crime was unconstitutional, and in the process invalidated a number of such state laws across the country (this was the decision which Senator Rick Santorum infamously said would lead to decriminalisation of beastiality). But in light of that recent decision, it seems unusual that the Bush Administration are saying that they can't sign the treaty because it would interfere with states' rights. The 2003 decision ruled that states don't have the right to criminalize homosexuality, so that argument is non-sensical.

Of course any country can sign the declaration at a later point, and perhaps the Obama administration will revisit the issue when it comes into office. It is rather embarassing, and incredible, for the United States to be the only Western country that has refused to sign the document.

But what I found even more interesting that the US's embarassing stance on this issue was the fact that the EU was competely united behind it - all 26 member nations signed the resolution. This is impressive considering that gay rights have been one of the most divisive issues within the European Union - particularly with new entrant Poland, an extreemly religious and conservative country. So to see that Brussels was able to crack the whip and make sure that countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuana and Estonia supported the resolution is quite impressive. Even Ireland and Italy might have balked at signing such a declaration a decade ago. It's a promising sign for gay advocates in Europe who would like to see EU-wide gay rights policies implemented one day in the future.

Homosexuality remains a criminal offence in more than 80 countries, and is punishable by death in seven nations.

Merkel the Obstructionist?

If there's one thing the global economic turmoil has taught us, it's how suddenly everything can change. Angela Merkel definitly doesn't need to be told this twice. Just a few months ago she was Europe's champion; a practical, no-nonsense leader whose pragmatism and spirit of compromise had earned her great respect throughout Europe. But since the onset of the financial crisis she has largely been in the background, failing to come up with new ideas or solutions.

In the past week, this transformation has continued even more dramatically. Suddenly she's become Europe's 'Mrs. No,' the adversary to Gordon Brown's new self-styled 'hero of the world' role. Tensions have been simmering between Germany's chancellor and the British prime minister since last week when Brown didn't invite Merkel to a summit he held in London with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission (EU) president Jose Manuel Barroso. After that the German foreign minister publicly criticised Gordon Brown's plan to rescue the global economic crisis through government bailouts and shore-ups.

Also last week, Merkel appeared to do a flip-flop on Germany's climate change target commitments, as Germany argued in Posnan that it should have its target lowered, causing many environmental campaigners complaining that Europe seemed to be abandoning its commitment to tackling climate change.

In the end, Merkel ended up relenting for the most part and signed the agreements both for a Europe-wide bailout plan and an EU consensus on climate change. In the end she probably had to relent because although she has suddenly found herself in the role of 'Mrs. No,' she has no alternative plan to propose either for the economy or climate change. Merkal has always been short on ideas but long on action (the exact opposite of her French counterpart Sarkozy), so it's not surprising that she doesn't seem to be excelling in times that require quick and bold acttion. But even still, it's clear she has strong and profound objections to the idea of taking on more debt to solve the economic crisis. It will be interesting to see if the pattern of the last week will be repeated in the coming months. For the time being, it is clear that the relationship between Brown and Merkel has soured. And with her relationship with Sarkozy already notoriously rocky, Merkel could find herself isolated politically.

Happy 'Switzerland Joins Schengen' Day!

After so much anticipation, I rose early this morning at dawn to creep down to the fireplace and see if I had received a visit from Schengen Clause. I gasped with joy to find it was true, he'd come! The border check with Germany had disappeared!

Ok I can't really see the German border from my dad's house in Zurich (although I can see the border with the next Canton), but I did eagerly check the news this morning to see if it had indeed come to pass. I have no idea why, but the moment which countries open their borders with other countries really excites me.

At midnight CET this morning Switzerland joined the Schengen Zone, the 25-member European block that allows passport-free travel between the member states. Switzerland is not technically in the EU, but it has a series of bilateral treaties with the EU which make it in many ways a "virtual member," bound to follow EU regulation although it has no representation in the EU parliament.

Blagogate: Obama's first scandal?

Interestingly, the unfolding scandal around the arrest of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has received zero coverage over here in Europe. But the implications of this huge political development could profoundly affect the Obama presidency even before he's taken office, and that would likely be of great interest to Europeans. To me the scandal is fascinating, bringing back memories of my days as a reporter in Chicago covering the truly staggering level of corruption in that area of the US.

The fact that a governor of Illinois is corrupt isn't what's surprising about this development, after all Blago's (that's his nickname in Illinois) two predecessors were also arrested for corruption. It's the sheer audacity of his crimes that's so staggering. Among a long list of corruption charges, one of them is that he was trying to sell Barack Obama's senate seat. Obama was previously a senator for Illinois before he won the presidency, and when a senator departs it is the governor of that state who appoints the new senator. Blagojevich is a Democrat, so the Democratic Party didn't have to worry about losing that seat. But the governor can appoint anyone he wants, and apparently he was planning to sell the seat to interesting parties.

The language he's using in the wiretaps is straight out of the 1950's, it's astonishing any politician could be so stupid in this day and age. Not only does he explicitly say he's planning to sell Obama's senate seat, he uses language so mafioso-like it sounds like it's coming out of Tamany Hall. He even litterally says that someone interested in the seat was willing to "pay to play" at one point in the tapes.