THE VOTE of no-confidence in the Czech government on Tuesday marks the bringing down of a third “New Europe” government this year. Unlike Latvia and Hungary, however, prime minister Mirek Topolanek’s defeat had less to do with the global economic crisis and more with internal political and personal rivalries. Defectors from his centre-right minority administration, some of them allies of former Civic Democrats party colleague president Vaclav Klaus, joined the left-wing opposition to defeat the government by 101 to 96.
There was understandable relief in Brussels that Mr Topolanek appears likely, with the backing of the opposition and a nod from the president, to carry on in office at least until the end of the term of the Czech presidency of the EU in July. It has a crowded calendar, not least the looming G20 and Nato summits, and a heavy agenda of economic reform and regulation that needs to be shepherded by the presidency. Mr Topolanek, a fiscal conservative, did not help matters yesterday by disparaging the Obama economic rescue package as “the road to hell”. That may be the Czech view, but it is certainly not the message the presidency should be sending on behalf of the whole union just days before the G20 summit.
But the likelihood of a general election in the summer or autumn, ahead of the Irish referendum, does also raise new worries about the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The treaty has been passed by the Czech lower house but not yet by the Senate where Eurosceptical Civic Democrat dissidents may strengthen their pivotal position and, particularly if the party loses power, it finds itself unable to whip them into line in support of a treaty Mr Topolanek only halfheartedly supports.
Should Ireland vote No again, the issue becomes academic. In the event, however, of an Irish Yes, followed by a grudging signing by the Polish president and the final clearance of German legal obstacles, will the Czech Senate really want to stand alone, holding out against 26 member states in blocking ratification? The Czechs, like the Irish, are a proud people who will not be bullied. But they are also intensely pragmatic and it is diffcult to believe that a state which so recently joined the EU would define its national interest so introspectively.
Meanwhile, EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, in a gesture of almost comical futility, however well-meaning, yesterday appealed to “all Czech leaders, including the opposition, not to hold the treaty hostage to domestic politics”. As any Irish politician might tell him: “dream on, Jose”.