tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/visegrad-group-25638/articlesVisegrad Group – The Conversation2018-03-29T11:50:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/937562018-03-29T11:50:48Z2018-03-29T11:50:48ZSlovakia’s political crisis: the murder that forced a whole government to resign<p>Slovakia has become the latest country in Eastern Europe to face a major political crisis. But while regional neighbours such as Poland and Hungary have been clashing with the EU over their perceived illiberalism, for Slovakia, the pressure on the government has come from the country’s own citizens. </p>
<p>The tension has been such that the entire cabinet of prime minister Robert Fico had to resign in a single day. </p>
<p>The story began when police discovered the bodies of Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancé, Martina Kušnírová, in their home in the village of Veľká Mača, about 60 km east of the capital, <a href="https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20768866/investigative-journalist-and-fiancee-killed-in-their-house.html">Bratislava</a>. Both had died of gunshot wounds in what appeared to be a targeted assassination.</p>
<p>Kuciak, who worked as a reporter for the online news website Aktuality.sk, had been working on an article implicating prominent members of the ruling coalition party <a href="https://www.facebook.com/smersd/">SMER-SD</a> in tax fraud. After his death, Aktuality.sk published Kuciak’s final, <a href="https://www.aktuality.sk/clanok/568007/talianska-mafia-na-slovensku-jej-chapadla-siahaju-aj-do-politiky/">unfinished article</a>. It detailed alleged ties between several high-ranking officials with the Calabrian crime syndicate, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-ndrangheta-and-why-its-time-to-bust-some-myths-about-the-calabrian-mafia-54075">‘Ndrangheta</a>. They included Viliam Jasaň, the secretary of the State Security Council of Slovakia, and Mária Trošková, chief adviser to prime minister Robert Fico. Both have denied any wrongdoing.</p>
<h2>The stack of cash</h2>
<p>Given that all major political parties have been implicated in incidents of crony-capitalism and corruption since Slovakia’s independence in 1993, Kuciak’s revelations hardly came as a surprise to the public. The fact that he lost his life reporting them, however, was a profound shock. Fico’s disdain for members of the independent press, who he previously described as “prostitutes, idiots and snakes”, was already <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/slovakia-black-hole-of-europe/">well known</a>. But this was a whole new level. People felt that criminal elements in Slovak society were now able to operate with impunity. </p>
<p>The initial reaction of the Slovak government appeared to confirm this. In their first appearance after the murders, Fico, interior minister Robert Kaliňák and head of policing Tibor Gašpar failed to address questions about the accusations the deceased journalist had made. Instead, they offered a reward of €1m for information about the murder. Bizarrely, they chose to display the money to the reporters and public in the form of a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43220275">large pile of bank notes</a>.</p>
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<p>The incident was widely criticised as an arrogant and vulgar piece of political theatre. It turned out to be the first of several political miscalculations leading to a complete loss of the ruling coalition’s moral and political authority.</p>
<p>The second came just a few days later when SMER-SD’s junior coalition partner, the Most–Híd party, broke rank and demanded Kaliňák resign. Kaliňák refused. His recalcitrance opened a rift between Fico and president Andrej Kiska, a political independent. The latter called for a substantial cabinet reshuffle or early elections. The former responded by accusing the president of conspiring with the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros to undertake a <a href="https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20774275/fico-mentions-soros-says-he-will-deal-with-politics-later.html">coup d’état</a>. The comments were met with derision by both the press and the public, and caused a <a href="https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20774275/fico-mentions-soros-says-he-will-deal-with-politics-later.html">rift</a> between Fico and his coalition partners.</p>
<h2>The last straw</h2>
<p>Faced with the ruling coalition’s blatant unwillingness to relinquish power, the public cast aside their usual conservatism and political apathy. Under the banner “for a decent Slovakia”, citizens gathered in 48 towns on March 9 to call for an independent investigation of the murders, and for Kaliňák to resign. In Bratislava alone, 60,000 people turned out to demonstrate – the largest gathering of citizens since the <a href="https://www.aktuality.sk/clanok/571169/online-protesty-po-vrazde-jana-kuciaka-a-martiny-kusnirovej/">Velvet Revolution</a> overthrew the government of Czechoslovakia. These protests have highlighted the breakdown in trust between the public and political representatives.</p>
<p>Finally bowing to pressure, Kaliňák tendered his resignation on March 12. Fico and his entire cabinet followed suit on March 15, leaving deputy prime minister Peter Pellegrini to form a new government.</p>
<p>Even this did not satisfy the Slovak public. Protesters gathered in bigger numbers two days later to demand early elections. Speaking at the protests in Bratislava, the former speaker of the Slovak parliament, František Mikloško reminded the crowd that popular movements had overthrown the Slovak government before – namely in 1989. “The revolution started by the parents has to be finished by their children,” he declared, as the audience held their house keys aloft and shook them – a gesture associated with the <a href="https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20782425/enough-of-smer-people-chanted-in-streets.html">Velvet Revolution</a>.</p>
<p>But while the protests constituted a public vote of no confidence in SMER-SD, which has dominated the Slovak political scene since the mid-2000s, the prospect of meaningful change in the immediate future is small. </p>
<p>Before resigning, SMER-SD secured a parliamentary mandate for Pellegrini to form a new cabinet, which crushed public hopes for early elections. Fico remains head of SMER-SD, leading to the widespread perception that Slovakia will now be governed by what is effectively a puppet cabinet until the next elections in 2020.</p>
<p>Even if Slovaks were to successfully force the early fall of the current governing coalition, they face a stark choice. The liberal political opposition is small and fragmented. The latest opinion polls also show that the crisis has pushed more voters towards support for parties with strong nationalist, <a href="http://www.focus-research.sk/files/n225_Volebne%20preferencie%20politickych%20stran_marec2018.pdf">right-wing orientations</a>.</p>
<p>While protests have been read by some as a recommitment to Western democratic values and a step away from the populism and “illiberal democracy” of neighbouring <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/slovakia-protest-democracy-corruption.html">Poland and Hungary</a>, it seems that for now, the revolution will have to wait.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolette M Makovicky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The story began when police discovered the bodies of Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancé – both had been shot dead.Nicolette M Makovicky, Lecturer in Russian and East European Studies, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/861562017-10-23T12:21:37Z2017-10-23T12:21:37ZCzech far right scores big in elections, but struggles to form a government<p>As expected, the general election which took place in the Czech Republic on 20-21 October, was won by authoritarian, populist oligarch Andrej Babiš. He is well known for his <a href="https://blisty.cz/art/88084-czech-television-has-suppressed-a-hard-hitting-tv-documentary-about-andrej-babis.html">brutal business practices</a>, his desire to curtail the role of parliament, and his urge to interfere with the media. Although he is currently being <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/czech-prime-minister-candidate-andrej-babis-charged-with-fraud/a-40878682">prosecuted for financial irregularities</a>, he and his ANO party nonetheless won 29.64% of the popular vote. </p>
<p>The usually right-of-centre Civic Democratic Party (ODS), some of whose top politicians recently moved sharply to the extreme right, came second with 11.32%. In third place was the anti-establishment Pirate Party, with 10.79%, while the Czech-Japanese-Korean activist Tomio Okamura’s sharply xenophobic, anti-refugee and anti-Muslim Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party was fourth, with 10.64% of the vote.</p>
<p>The left, meanwhile, met with electoral disaster. The Czech Social Democratic Party, which has to date been the senior partner in the government coalition and which <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/11/01/despite-winning-the-czech-parliamentary-elections-the-czech-social-democrats-have-been-firmly-upstaged-by-andrej-babis/">in 2013</a> won 20.45% of the vote, saw its share crash to a mere 7.27% – putting it behind even the unreconstructed Communist Party, which won 7.76%.</p>
<p>But what matters in the Czech elections is not the number of votes, but the number of seats gained. Babiš’s ANO won only 78 seats in parliament’s 200-seat lower chamber, and at this stage, it’s far from clear with whom it will form a governing coalition.</p>
<p>Babiš cannot go in with the fascist SPD or the communists alone: ANO-plus-SPD equals 100 seats, while ANO-plus-Communist Party comes to 93. Even though Babiš wants to make “simplifying” changes to the Czech constitution, this appears impossible after the election, because none of the potential coalitions of partners that might support this would reach the three-fifths majority (120 seats) required for constitutional changes. </p>
<p>There’s been speculation that ANO could form a coalition with the right-of-centre ODS, but that would still only get it to a mere 103 seats. Coalitions of several parties are also being discussed; the strongest possible combinations of <a href="http://volby.idnes.cz/poslanecka-snemovna-2017.aspx?t=koalice">three or four parties</a> would have 125 of the 200 seats. The ultimate question, then, is whether the hard-right SPD will be included. </p>
<h2>Pirates and cynics</h2>
<p>Babiš has tried to reassure the world that he is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-czech-election-babis/czech-vote-winner-babis-wants-active-eu-role-not-favoring-government-with-extremists-idUSKBN1CQ0U8">strongly pro-European</a>, adding that he is not in favour of forming a government coalition with SPD extremists. But at the same time, he has expressed intentions to form a pan-European “anti-refugee” alliance in order to stop all immigration into Europe. </p>
<p>In the past, he has issued various <a href="https://blisty.cz/art/88207-future-czech-pm-we-must-sink-those-refugee-boats-operated-by-the-smugglers.html">brutal anti-refugee statements</a>, and in his new “EU anti-refugee project”, Babiš is hoping to gain the support of the new Austrian Chancellor, migration hawk <a href="https://theconversation.com/sebastian-kurz-just-who-is-austrias-fresh-faced-new-leader-85848">Sebastian Kurz</a>.</p>
<p>The problem with Babiš, though, is he can’t be taken at his word. In business and in politics alike, he has a long record of <a href="https://blisty.cz/art/88084-czech-television-has-suppressed-a-hard-hitting-tv-documentary-about-andrej-babis.html">almost always doing the exact opposite</a> of what he promises. And while Western commentators might justifiably be wary of a potentially anti-European, xenophobic, authoritarian and anti-refugee leader who might further destabilise Europe, the fact is, in spite of Babiš’s win in the Czech election, his position seems rather unstable. </p>
<p>With the exception of the ODS, most of the other parties might be unwilling or unable to form a lasting coalition. The anti-establishment Pirate Party, which has entered parliament for the first time by winning 22 seats, has no consistent ideology or political programme, and its elected figures are politically inexperienced; its incoherence means it could disintegrate within weeks. </p>
<p>The same applies to the anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and fiercely xenophobic SPD. Only couple of years ago, its leader Okamura was still an ardent supporter of multiculturalism and of welcoming foreigners. Cynics say that someone may have advised Okamura to stand on an anti-Muslim, anti-refugee platform simply to gain access to large amounts of money; after all, many Czech politicians enter parliament principally to gain access to lucrative contracts.</p>
<p>Babiš is also dogged by the European Union’s <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/anti-fraud//home_en">OLAF</a> anti-fraud office, which is investigating allegations of fraud and misuse of EU subsidies for his entertainment centre Čapí hnízdo (A Stork’s Nest). The inquiry is <a href="https://echo24.cz/a/pkEDd/kauza-capi-hnizdo-jde-do-finale-olaf-uz-mel-dokoncit-vysetrovani">reportedly nearing completion</a>. Should he be prosecuted or even jailed, it could be disastrous for his party, an extremely autocratic organisation that would all likelihood collapse without him.</p>
<p>So why exactly did the Czech general public vote for an authoritarian oligarch who has promised to “simplify” parliament and who is under criminal investigation for fraud? I spent the election weekend talking to voters in the Czech Republic, and their views were almost unanimous. As one told me: “All the establishment politicians over the past 28 years of post-communism have been corrupt. This is why we have now voted for an anti-establishment figure. Are we bothered that Babiš is being prosecuted for financial irregularities? No, we admire him for being able to outwit evil Brussels.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This piece has been updated to correct the number of parliamentary votes needed to pass constitutional changes. The correct number is a three-fifths majority, i.e. 120 seats.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Culik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A lurch to the right in central Europe runs into a familiar obstacle: the tricky maths of coalition.Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/664242016-10-03T12:00:14Z2016-10-03T12:00:14ZHungary’s invalid refugee referendum dents Viktor Orbán’s anti-EU ‘revolution’<p>Although 98% of Hungarians who voted in a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-hungary-referendum-idUSKCN1213Q3">referendum on October 2 rejected</a> a European Union plan for the country to accept a mandatory quota of refugees, the result is invalid as not enough people turned out to vote.</p>
<p>The primary purpose of the referendum was for Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz Party to show that Hungarians rejected an EU agreement through which the country is supposed to accept 1,294 refugees relocated from Greece and Italy. But Orbán also wanted to stoke a cultural and political counter-revolution throughout the European Union. </p>
<p>He proudly sees <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-28/orban-says-he-seeks-to-end-liberal-democracy-in-hungary">himself as a pioneer</a> of “illiberal democracy”, which he hopes will spread throughout the European continent and will subvert the liberal values of Brussels. Before the referendum, ruling-party politicians repeatedly emphasised how proud they were that Hungary was the first European country to fight back against what they perceive as an invasion of foreign hordes.</p>
<p>It is a constitutional condition in Hungary that 50% of citizens have to vote for a referendum to be valid. Although 45% of Hungarian citizens came to the polling booths, a high number of votes <a href="http://index.hu/belfold/2016/10/02/kvotareferendum_ervenytelen_szavazatok">spoiled by voters</a> – often in various original ways using doodles or by cutting the ballot paper <a href="https://twitter.com/LydsG/status/782635735203581952">into lewd shapes</a> – meant that only 39.4% of the Hungarian population cast valid votes in the referendum. Orbán had <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-cynical-thinking-behind-hungarys-bizarre-referendum-64403">asked Hungarians</a> a vague and wordy question which the Hungarian opposition <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/01/hungarian-referendum-slam-door-migrants-new-era-europe">complained was unconstitutional</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you want the European Union to be entitled to prescribe the mandatory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary without the consent of parliament?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Nasty campaign</h2>
<p>Over recent months, the Hungarian public has been subjected to an intensive, brutally <a href="http://www.politics.hu/20160722/democratic-coalition-condemns-govts-anti-migrant-referendum-billboards/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter">racist, anti-refugee campaign</a> disseminated by the media, much of it owned by <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/50488256-60af-11e6-ae3f-77baadeb1c93">Orbán’s allies</a>. During the campaign, the Hungarian government openly lied to the Hungarian public, asserting that due to culturally incompatible, criminal immigration, there are now dozens of “no-go zones” in Western Europe. The government then spent €16m <a href="https://twitter.com/LydsG/status/782624903556104192">on a booklet</a> with a map showing where these no-go zones allegedly were. The Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA_hQ6XBRpE&feature=youtu.be">rightly chastised</a> by the BBC for propagating these lies. </p>
<p>In an attempt to achieve 50% participation in the referendum, Orbán <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/orban-ropes-hungarian-roma-into-anti-refugee-campaign/a-35944193?maca=en-Facebook-sharing">even courted</a> the Hungarian Romany population, an ethnic minority normally ostracised and discriminated against in Hungary. A number of Romany voices were heard in Orbán’s referendum propaganda campaign warning against refugees “who are raping young Hungarian girls in Budapest”. </p>
<p>The brutal anti-refugee government propaganda did have some effect and of those who voted in the referendum, 98% supported the government’s position. Despite the invalidity of the vote, Orbán’s government hailed the result as a great success, pointing out that a huge majority of those voters who did vote rejected the refugee quotas, “imposed on us from Brussels”. Fireworks in Hungarian national colours took place <a href="https://twitter.com/balintbardi/status/782670936453578752">over the Danube in Budapest</a>.</p>
<p>Orbán <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-hungary-referendum-idUSKCN1213Q3">celebrated</a> the fact that more voters rejected the refugee quotas in this referendum than voted yes in the 2003 referendum about Hungary’s accession to the EU. The Orbán government proclaimed: “We sent a message to Brussels! 98% No!” </p>
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<p>The Hungarian prime minister now says he will change the country’s constitution to remove the necessity for 50% of the country’s voters to participate in a referendum for it to be valid. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/01/hungarian-referendum-slam-door-migrants-new-era-europe">commentators have pointed out</a>, much of the reason behind the referendum was to influence internal Hungarian politics. There are rising levels of xenophobia in most European countries, but Hungary seems to be the only European country spending large amounts of taxpayers’ money to officially disseminate hate speech against refugees. The result has been to deflect the attention of its citizens from many of the country’s unsolved internal political and economic problems. </p>
<h2>Lost ground</h2>
<p>It is well known that the post-communist member states of the EU, known as the Visegrád group, are <a href="http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1823495766&Country=Poland&topic=Politics_1">extremely hostile</a> to the EU’s planned imposition of refugee quotas. Through their rejection of the plans, it looked as though Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland would become a subversive group of nations within the EU, aiming to reduce the influence of Western European liberal values in the EU bloc.</p>
<p>The Czech Republic has a strongly xenophobic and highly popular president, Miloš Zeman, who has made shocking anti-refugee statements. On the same weekend as the Hungarian referendum, Zeman proposed that Muslim economic migrants to Europe should be deported to empty Greek islands or somewhere to Africa, in an interview which the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8bae2ec6-8725-11e6-bbbe-2a4dcea95797#ixzz4Lv5PxvmN">Financial Times rated</a> as more extreme than anything the Hungarian prime minister has said to date. Nevertheless, the Czech government of Bohuslav Sobotka (the prime minister) <a href="http://zpravy.idnes.cz/milos-zeman-rozhovor-financial-times-uprchlici-f5u-/zahranicni.aspx?c=A161002_111538_zahranicni_pku">immediately distanced itself from</a> Zeman saying that the president’s public statements are not consistent with Czech official policy. </p>
<p>Slovakia and the Czech Republic have already been quietly dissociating themselves from the more extreme regimes of Poland and Hungary. With the failed Hungarian referendum, it now looks as though Orbán’s illiberal revolution will not be as successful across Europe as he would wish.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66424/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Culik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The prime minister has claimed victory in the referendum, despite the low turnout.Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/637422016-08-11T12:53:02Z2016-08-11T12:53:02ZBrexit: the view from Eastern Europe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133821/original/image-20160811-11853-2a4g2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">I can't believe what I'm seeing. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cmbellman/3352664450/in/photolist-67ghku-GohKz1-3umMW-ntxsPc-agQrHV-juLPhm-8JNLNP-4jfney-ohsU7b-Lwx64-cJCmtG-ioyRha-npJbWL-ipm839-amTyeh-jPf8Rx-5CHFY8-FYQLLK-6FcFt-kTNAHT-dsoynA-4TSeij-4gWFCA-8gGNrg-nah722-vgDHS6">Anders Adermark</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anyone who has been exposed to only the British media before and after the Brexit referendum would be amazed to find out how different the narrative has been outside the UK. The public discourse on Brexit in the UK has been significantly coloured by the anti-EU stance taken by most tabloid newspapers. Their coverage has normalised some quite extreme and irrational views within the UK.</p>
<p>While some European media organisations also peddle fear and hate (particularly about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/migrant-crisis">refugee crisis</a>) they seem to have been reacting much more rationally to Brexit than their British counterparts.</p>
<p>Eyebrows have been raised about the decision to leave the EU. Why would Britain want to cut itself from Europe and diminish its international status? Having suffered on the fringes of Western democracy under communism, the liberal elites of Eastern and Central Europe were extraordinarily pleased when their countries were able to join the European Union in 2004. They were integrated into what seemed to be a civilised, democratic and stable West. And just as the new EU members were able to join “the West”, it started to fall to bits. First came the financial crisis and now Brexit.</p>
<p>In the UK, many people mocked David Cameron for <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/08/cameron-brexit-will-increase-risk-of-europe-descending-into-war/">warning</a> that Brexit might lead to war on the European continent. But many Europeans, on the basis of their traumatic experiences from the past, take this warning very seriously indeed.</p>
<h2>Against Brexit</h2>
<p>In the Czech Republic, an <a href="http://www.rozhlas.cz/zpravy/evropskaunie/_zprava/pruzkum-pro-cro-odchod-britanie-z-eu-si-nepreji-temer-dve-tretiny-cechu--1625674">opinion poll</a> carried out at the end of June 2016 showed 60% of Czechs were opposed to the UK leaving the EU. Although Czechs are often critical of the EU, particularly its social policies, only people on the extremes of the political spectrum supported Brexit. </p>
<p>Czechs fear that Brexit will lead to unemployment in Central Europe and to a drop in their exports to Western Europe. And another <a href="http://www.tyden.cz/rubriky/byznys/cesko/chteji-cesi-czexit-exkluzivni-pruzkum-pro-tyden_390185.html">opinion poll</a>, carried out in July, indicated that most Czechs believe Brexit will strengthen Germany’s position in the EU, which would be disadvantageous for the Czechs, who, for historical reasons, fear domination by the Germans.</p>
<p>As many as 43% were also afraid that Brexit marks the beginning of the end of the EU. They also fear Brexit will strengthen Russia’s influence in Europe because it will weaken the European Union. Many Czechs openly worry about a possible re-imposition of a Russian regime in Central Europe. They expect Brexit to lead to a pan-European economic crisis.</p>
<p>[Daniel Prokop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2qoMRZQpIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2qomrzqpiw), a leading Czech sociologist, sees Brexit as a mutiny against globalisation. It is a demand for a return to the past and to local solutions. Very similar policies are advocated by the new parliamentary party of Slovak fascists, lead by Marian Kotleba, says Prokop.</p>
<p>However, a nostalgic view of the past is not quite such an effective narrative in the Czech Republic. For them, there is no nostalgia about life before the EU. Before 1989, they had 40 years of communism, which is very difficult to be enthusiastic about. The inter-war democratic Czechoslovak Republic lasted only 20 years before it was destroyed by Hitler. And before 1918, the Czechs were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which they regarded as an alien state.</p>
<p>Prokop also argues that Brexit frustration is the result of unsolved social problems. He predicts that if the EU does not concentrate on solving these quickly and effectively, destabilisation will follow.</p>
<p>Very similar results were thrown up by opinion polls in Hungary, where 60% of people felt Brexit would be bad for their own country. Asked if Hungary should also leave the EU, <a href="http://hungarytoday.hu/news/hungarians-dislike-brexit-prefer-stay-eu-survey-shows-60879">64% were opposed</a>. </p>
<p>The Hungarian government is, however, seeking to capitalise on Brexit with an official programme aimed at wooing companies with bases in the UK to relocate to its own territory. Hungary is being presented as a <a href="http://budapestbeacon.com/featured-articles/hungary-eyes-brexit-opportunities/35537">“beacon of stability in a Europe of disorder”</a>.</p>
<p>Likewise, shortly after the Brexit vote, Romanian president <a href="http://www.nineoclock.ro/the-effects-of-the-brexit-vote-on-romania-president-iohannis-calls-emergency-meeting-at-the-cotroceni-palace/">Klaus Iohannis</a> promised Romania will remain “an oasis of stability” in the EU and that the impact of Brexit on the Romanian economy will be minimal.</p>
<p>However, Doru Pop of Cluj University, <a href="http://adevarul.ro/news/societate/nu-mi-e-frica-brexit-ci-roxit-despre-dusmanii-occidentului-1_576abe425ab6550cb83222cd/index.html">warned</a> the British referendum has strengthened extreme nationalist and eurosceptic tendencies in the country, with politicians suggesting that multinational companies are exploiting Romania. The recent social democratic Prime Minister Victor Ponta was critical of Western influences in Romania. Pop sees in this a throwback to the anti-Western propaganda of the 1950s. These tendencies have been further encouraged by Brexit.</p>
<h2>The legitimising effect of the EU</h2>
<p>Things are a little different in Poland, where the national government is under fire over Brexit. Some feel that Poles have been leaving to work in the UK because of the lack of opportunities on offer at home. Now the opportunity is to be cut off.</p>
<p>Polish sociologist Wojciech Lukowski said in a recent interview in the journal Polityka that the UK needs immigrants for the menial jobs the English can’t be bothered to do. That’s why it opened its borders to Eastern Europeans in the first place, he suggested. However, he added:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The English were then stunned when they found out how hard-working and how assertive the Poles are. They did not expect them to climb the social ladder in the UK so quickly.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>About <a href="http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/tylko-w-onecie/sondaz-polacy-beda-chcieli-wyjezdzac-z-wielkiej-brytanii-po-brexicie/txn4kw">10% of Poles living in the UK</a> are now planning to leave for other EU countries, while others are applying for British passports. All this raises the question of why more is not being done to encourage them to come home. </p>
<p>But while Brexit has been interpreted as an encouragement for extreme right wing parties everywhere in Europe, loyalty to the EU remains strong among most Central and Eastern Europeans. Many feel their countries could not make it on their own. They genuinely fear a possible renewal of hostilities between their nations if they were to leave the bloc. What’s more, membership of a “Western” organisation gives them legitimacy. It makes them part of the West – an important statement in a region keen to assert itself against the Russian sphere of influence. </p>
<p>There are varying levels of understanding for the UK Brexit vote, but most people think that the UK has voted for Brexit out of irrational frustration – and that they will pay a heavy price for the decision.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63742/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Culik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UK’s decision to leave the European Union has baffled many in Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, where nostalgia for life before the EU is virtually non-existent.Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/583292016-05-13T10:23:46Z2016-05-13T10:23:46ZEastern Europe is shunning liberal democracy – but it’ll come back in the end<p>What’s happening to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe? A new authoritarianism, what one leader has called “<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-28/orban-says-he-seeks-to-end-liberal-democracy-in-hungary">illiberal democracy</a>”, has taken over in Hungary and Poland. Propelled in part by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/paris-terror-attacks-france-now-faces-fight-against-fear-and-exclusion-50703">Paris</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/brussels-terror-attacks-a-continent-wide-crisis-that-threatens-core-european-ideals-56723">Brussels</a> attacks and the fear of terrorism, parts of Europe are drifting away from democratic pluralism.</p>
<p>There’s a growing sense that the world is spinning out of control, and that liberal democracy is only making matters worse.</p>
<p>This turn to the illiberal has been coming for a long time. After 1989, the people of Central and Eastern Europe hoped that democracy would bring immediate economic benefits. These hopes went largely unfulfilled. Standards of living failed to keep pace with popular expectations, especially after the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. In this grim climate, Eastern Europeans were attracted to political leaders who claimed they could defend them against outsiders – including the foreign banks who called in their mortgages when the financial markets collapsed.</p>
<p>These festering resentments were the building blocks of a new nationalism, one founded on both the politics of national identity and the politics of fear. </p>
<p>In Hungary, the nationalist narrative based on partial truths depicted Hungarians as victims, stripped of two thirds of their lands after World War I, then occupied by Nazi Germany towards the end of World War II, and after the war by the Soviets. Stoking fear, the governing parties in Hungary, Slovakia and Poland have called Muslim refugees “a threat to Christian civilisation”. The Hungarian government has warned that all the terrorists in Europe are refugees, and it is now preparing to enact an anti-terror law to give the government emergency powers to declare “a state of terror threat” and suspend the constitution.</p>
<p>In July 2014, Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared that the Hungarian government is an illiberal democracy. He asserted that Hungary and its neighbours were rejecting the liberal values of individual rights, and declared that “the Hungarian nation is not a pile of individuals” like people in the West.</p>
<h2>Surviving illiberal nationalism</h2>
<p>On the face of it, the risk these regimes pose to Europe seems dire. On one hand, the EU is vulnerable. Without major structural reforms, its institutions make easy targets for nationalist movements, and so far, other states’ leaders have shown little inclination to discipline member states who defy EU rules and principles – probably because they want to reserve the right to do so themselves.</p>
<p>But Eastern Europe’s illiberal governments may not be as big a threat to the EU as they now appear.</p>
<p>The benefits these countries receive far outweigh the costs of staying in. The money is plentiful, and flows freely in the form of structural funds with few strings attached. Hungary is currently guaranteed to receive <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/opinion/hungarys-crackdown-on-the-press.html">€22 billion in economic assistance</a> from the EU. Many of the country’s major capital projects, public investment opportunities and employment strategies depend on this beneficent and benign funding.</p>
<p>The EU is also a useful political target for Eastern European nationalists, who need it as a bogeyman. They gain popularity precisely by biting the hand that feeds them, with the rallying cry that “Brussels is the new Moscow”. Leaving it, or diminishing its influence, would rob them of their main political platform. </p>
<p>And despite their assault on the EU’s liberal values, Eastern European governments benefit substantially from the EU’s guarantee of employment mobility for their citizens.</p>
<p>Without the EU, Hungary and its neighbours would be cast adrift in a chaotic world. They have few to no natural resources to speak of, and would likely become economic vassals of the two big illiberal states to the east, Russia and Turkey, whose economic and security situation is far more uncertain than the EU’s. This is why Hungary’s prime minister is trying to stop the EU from detaching Eastern Europe from the Schengen zone, and also why he is seeking to maintain social benefits for Hungarian workers in the UK. </p>
<p>These may be losing battles, especially if Hungary continues to resist the EU quota rules on accepting refugees, but they show how much Orban and his neighbors need the EU.</p>
<h2>Doomed to fail?</h2>
<p>And so the EU looks likely to survive the challenge from the East. But we should not underestimate the forces that have been unleashed by this lurch towards illiberalism – or how unstable these countries may yet become.</p>
<p>If an illiberal government can be changed by democratic means, then the system may be sustainable. But if power becomes so centralised that the government can fend off any democratic challenge, the system may become unsustainable in the long run.</p>
<p>It can be very difficult for centralised illiberal regimes to deliver economic benefits to their citizens without liberalising their political institutions. <a href="https://theconversation.com/forget-putins-global-posturing-russias-biggest-challenges-for-2016-are-domestic-52340">Russia</a> and <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/china-gap-between-m2-and-credit-asian-financial-crisis-2016-5?r=US&IR=T">China</a>, the two main countries cited by Viktor Orban as models of illiberal governance, are both facing economic challenges traceable to the way they are governed.</p>
<p>Illiberal governance also tends to incubate corruption, which is a drag on economic growth and a source of instability, as the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/939659ae-b67d-11e3-b230-00144feabdc0.html">situation in Russia</a> demonstrates. Eastern European countries have <a href="http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015/">unfavourable ratings</a> compared to other EU member states on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.</p>
<p>Another problem for these regimes is that while the traditional media may have fallen under the control of illiberal governments, online media generally have not. Countries that rein in freedoms are vulnerable to the digital revolution, which both promotes increased peer-to-peer flows of information and creates horizontal pressures for change. In Hungary, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in 2014 when the government <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29846285">threatened to tax the use of the internet</a>, and the government had to back down.</p>
<p>Most unsustainably of all, illiberal regimes offer few safety valves for citizen discontent. When popular pressures build, they must either back down or resort to coercion. The Euromaidan protests in Ukraine showed that physical coercion can lead to greater popular discontent and pressure for more radical change, and can even spill over into serious conflict.</p>
<p>If it continues down this road, Eastern Europe’s turn to illiberal democracy is a serious challenge to the European order, and it carries serious risks – both for Europe at large and for the people living under the governments concerned.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Shattuck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Economic slowdown and a refugee influx have rattled Europe deeply, and some countries seem to have had enough.John Shattuck, President and Rector, Central European UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/520362015-12-09T12:38:32Z2015-12-09T12:38:32ZMeet Miloš Zeman – the Czech Republic’s answer to Donald Trump<p>In the days following the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, world leaders expressed their solidarity with France. Many also reiterated that the actions of a few terrorists <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/obamas-muslims-paris-attacks/416721/">do not represent a faith</a>.</p>
<p>Others took the opportunity to spread extreme positions about Islam. Donald Trump, for example, has argued that Muslims should be banned from entering the US. Meanwhile, the president of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman decided to mark what many saw as a period of mourning in Europe after Paris by <a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sections/central-europe/czech-president-attends-anti-islam-rally-velvet-revolution-anniversary">attending a rally</a> organised by an anti-Muslim organisation.</p>
<p>Just as Trump continues to appeal as a presidential candidate, the Czech public can’t seem to get enough of Zeman despite his xenophobic behaviour. Some even seem to love him because of it. He has become a symbol of defiant anti-muslim, anti-refugee, racist and xenophobic rhetoric. According to a recent <a href="http://www.sanep.cz/sid=gd771ob0e8qivvredhaggv6gk2/pruzkumy/hodnoceni-milose-zemana-publikovano-12-11-2015/">opinion poll</a>, 72.3% of Czechs <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/79825.html">like Zeman</a> for his anti-refugee hate speech.</p>
<p>Zeman has been <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/newsevents/pages/displaynews.aspx?newsid=16632&langid=e#sthash.MwC8PyuY.dpuf">criticised</a> for his actions by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, and was also recently <a href="http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/Country-by-country/Czech_Republic/CZE-CbC-V-2015-035-ENG.pdf">singled out</a> in a report by the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance.</p>
<p>In fact, the ECRI has call for Czech law to be changed so that politicians who spread islamophobia and racism can be prosecuted. But the Czech Justice Ministry has <a href="http://tn.nova.cz/clanek/zeman-pobouril-radu-evropy-siri-v-cesku-protiislamske-nalady.html">said</a> that no such changes will be introduced.</p>
<p>Riding a wave of anti-islamic and anti-refugee hysteria in the Czech Republic, Zeman has made increasingly strident public pronouncements on this issue. During a visit to southern Moravia, for instance, he <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/79464.html">said</a> that Muslim refugees would follow their own laws rather than complying with those of their host country: <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/79464.html">Zeman said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unfaithful women will be stoned, thieves’ hands will be cut off and we will be deprived of the beauty of women because they will have to have their faces covered. I can imagine that in some cases this might be beneficial, though.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This from the man who holds the highest office in the land. His position may be ceremonial but Zeman is an important public figure, not simply because of his role as a representative of the Czech Republic but because of his personal popularity. </p>
<h2>Rise to power</h2>
<p>Zeman, an economist, was subjected to a certain amount of discrimination under the pre-1989 communist regime in Czechoslovakia for his dissenting views – among them a courageous, <a href="http://milos.chytrak.cz/1989/zeman-tm.php">critical analysis</a> of the Czechoslovak economy, published shortly before the fall of the Communist regime.</p>
<p>Having been part of the Civic Forum movement that helped oust the Soviet-backed regime, Zeman joined the Czech Social Democratic Party and quickly became its chairman. He proved to be a skilled politician and under his leadership in the 1990s, the Czech Social Democratic Party became a serious political force.</p>
<p>In 1998, Zeman became prime minister – a post he held until 2002. Not long after his tenure ended, he had a number of <a href="http://domaci.ihned.cz/cesko/c1-20717420-zeman-ukoncil-clenstvi-v-cssd-kvuli-kauze-altner">conflicts</a> with various leading members of the Social Democratic Party. In 2007, he left the party and retired.</p>
<p>Then, in 2013, he became the first president to be elected by popular vote (the post was until the then appointed by parliamentary votes), opening a new chapter in his political life. His spectacular success came down to a decision to appeal to the overwhelming majority of Czech citizens who live outside the metropolis of Prague. Beyond the middle classes of the capital, the standard of living is generally much lower, so he based his campaign on anti-establishment rhetoric. He presented himself as the voice of the weak and mocked the Prague media and political circles.</p>
<p>It seemed at the time that Zeman’s victory in the presidential race had a healthy impact on Czech politics. His election to high office was seen as breaking the hegemony of the smug, right-of-centre political establishment. For a while, it seemed like he was giving a voice to the disenfranchised and dissatisfied majority of the Czech population. Meanwhile, an unpopular right-of-centre government was collapsing under the weight of a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22943871">major corruption scandal</a>. </p>
<h2>Shift to the right</h2>
<p>A new Czech government came into power in <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/czech-politicians-sign-coalition-deal-following-early-elections/a-17344268">January 2014</a>. The Social Democrats became the junior partner in a coalition with a new right-wing grouping led by deputy prime minister, Andrej Babiš. This powerful oligarch sees Zeman as an electoral ally and has <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/80142.html">spoken</a> in favour of his anti-refugee stance. </p>
<p>Confident of government support, Zeman has adopted stridently populist views, whipping up fear of Islam and the refugees in the Czech population for blatantly political purposes. His pronouncements have become more and more extreme. He has spoken of Islam as an “<a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145596">anti-civilisation which is financed from the sale of oil and drugs</a> and more recently, his Islamophobia has evolved into an extremely hostile and inhumane attitude towards the refugees arriving in eastern Europe from Syria.</p>
<p>Zeman may not hold any meaningful power but his deliberately outrageous and controversial interventions are generating irrational fear in the Czech population and normalising sloppy thinking and racism. According to a recent opinion poll, <a href="http://cvvm.soc.cas.cz/mezinarodni-vztahy/postoj-ceske-verejnosti-k-prijimani-uprchliku-rijen-a-listopad-2015">88% of Czechs believe</a> that the refugees constitute the same threat to Europe as Islamic State. Zeman has a lot to do with this conviction.</p>
<p>Over the past few months, with his absurd public statements, Zeman has developed into a kind of Donald Trump figure. Just as Trump thrives on controversy in the US, many Czechs seem impressed by Zeman’s courage to say unsayable things. But as a legitimiser of intolerant, racist and xenophobic attitudes, he is a becoming a real problem for the Czech Republic – and Europe as a whole.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52036/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Culik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>He’s been a prime minister and a president but he’s best-known now for his xenophobic interventions.Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/475862015-09-16T12:54:36Z2015-09-16T12:54:36ZFencing off the east: how the refugee crisis is dividing the European Union<p>Having finished construction of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia, Hungary now plans to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/sep/15/refugee-crisis-hungary-launches-border-crackdown-live-updates#block-55f80421e4b0a1e0c61902b2">extend it</a> to Romania. Tampering with the fence is punishable with prison or deportation.</p>
<p>These are its latest moves in a stand-off between the thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe through Hungarian territory.</p>
<p>Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has said that this is a “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/05/migration-crisis-europe-leaders-blame-brussels-hungary-germany">German problem</a>”, not a “European problem”, while leaders in western Europe talk about a shared responsibility.</p>
<p>Two very different responses to the crisis are emerging on each side of Europe. The west might be failing to handle the crisis well but the east is simply rejecting any role in it. Resentment is building on both sides and is threatening European unity. </p>
<h2>United in defiance</h2>
<p>The leaders of the four so-called Visegrad countries – the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia – met in Prague in the first week of September to discuss the refugee crisis. There, they agreed to emphatically reject Angela Merkel’s call for a more even distribution of refugees and immigrants across the European Union.</p>
<p>Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka and his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico took the message to Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann a few days later at a meeting in <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/78864.html">Bratislava</a>. Fico went further than Sobotka, saying that Slovakia would only accept refugees who would be willing to integrate fully into Slovak society. And since there are few such people, he suggested, there is no point in introducing compulsory quotas.</p>
<p>This is an argument often repeated by central European politicians. Never mind that it is somewhat hypocritical, given that most of the refugees have already sensed the hostility towards them in these countries and are not seeking to stay.</p>
<h2>Two Europes</h2>
<p>For years, the post-communist countries of central and eastern Europe were left to their own devices. Western Europe took not even the slightest notice of what was actually going on in the region – culturally or politically. This was true even after the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia joined the EU in 2004.</p>
<p>Now, as this continent-wide crisis deepens, people are beginning to realise (with some surprise) that the post-communist societies of central and eastern Europe have been developing differently to the west. It is starting to look like the presumed unity of values of the 28 countries of the European Union may have been a mirage. </p>
<p>The difference can even be seen in the way religious leaders approach the refugee crisis. While the pope <a href="http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2015/pope-calls-on-parishes-and-religious-houses-to-take-in-refugees.cfm">urges</a> Christian parishes to house a refugee each, Hungarian catholic bishop <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hungarian-bishop-says-pope-is-wrong-about-refugees/2015/09/07/fcba72e6-558a-11e5-9f54-1ea23f6e02f3_story.html">Laszlo Kiss-Rigo</a>, disagrees: “They’re not refugees,” he recently said. “This is an invasion. They come here with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’. They want to take over.”</p>
<p>Prague catholic cardinal Dominik Duka, spoke in similarly hostile language in a recent radio interview when he said that “the right to life and security of Czech families and citizens are superior to all other rights” and warned against allowing <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/78868.html">enemies</a> to cross national borders.</p>
<p>While hostility towards refugees is considerable throughout the countries of the European Union, <a href="http://www.rferl.org/contentinfographics/data-visualization-eu-migrants/27237198.html">polling</a> suggests Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians and some of the Baltic countries are the most hostile towards foreigners – wherever they come from. Perhaps the fact that these countries are relatively small, and feel therefore that their culture would be overwhelmed by an influx of foreigners, plays a part in this – although the relative openness towards foreigners in small countries such as Croatia and Ireland might undermine this view.</p>
<p>Racism of course exists in western Europe, but the strength of feeling in this region, among politicians as well as the general public, has caused alarm. Western Europeans are disgusted by how refugees are being treated in the east, which is even beginning to cause diplomatic tension.</p>
<p>“Their semantics are changing,” a Czech diplomat in Brussels <a href="http://www.tyden.cz/rubriky/domaci/diplomate-odmitani-kvot-na-uprchliky-muze-cesku-uskodit_354919.html">recently told</a> a Czech news agency. “They no longer talk about us here as the new EU members, they now refer to us as ‘eastern Europe’.” According to this diplomat, a Belgian delegate at one European meeting even refused to say “hello” to the Czechs.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, people in the east complain that the west simply doesn’t understand what is happening on their borders. As has been <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-how-europes-alarming-lack-of-unity-over-the-issue-could-bring-about-the-break-up-of-the-eu-10492151.html">noted</a>, the European Union was presented to these countries as an opportunity, rather than an obligation. Now they find they are expected to share in the biggest burden the union has ever had to take on. </p>
<p>“Eastern Europeans believe that they are the ones to be helped, that this was part of the promise of unification,” Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev recently wrote in the <a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/opinion/eastern-europes-compassion-deficit-refugees-migrants.html">New York Times</a>. “Being poorer than western Europeans, they point out, how can anyone expect solidarity from us? We were promised tourists, not refugees.” </p>
<p>This crisis has raised a lot of questions about what it means to be European, nowhere more so than in the east of the continent. Fissures are appearing under the strain and if common cultural ground can’t be found soon, this could signal an end to the union.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47586/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Culik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nobody is doing a great job, but three countries say they have no part to play in the refugee crisis.Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/471222015-09-07T12:32:01Z2015-09-07T12:32:01ZBeyond Hungary: how the Czech Republic and Slovakia are responding to refugees<p>After Hungarian authorities finally <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34136823">allowed trains to leave</a> Budapest’s main railway station on August 31, about 200 refugees arrived on the territory of the Czech Republic. They were taken off the train by Czech police in the town of Břeclav on the Austrian-Czech border and placed in detention. </p>
<p>The Czech police, apparently unconcerned about the potential for horrifying associations to be made, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/czech-police-haul-migrants-off-trains-to-germany-and-write-numbers-on-their-arms-in-ink-10482651.html">wrote numbers on the refugees’ forearms</a> with felt-tip pens. </p>
<p>The Czech government has now stopped them from doing this, but it is already too late, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/world/europe/czech-republic-criticized-after-officers-mark-migrants-with-numbers.html?_r=0">the world was shocked</a>. The European Union (which, after all, includes the Czech Republic) was founded on the principles that the horrors of Nazism should never happen again, and this all-too-familiar sight at a time of international crisis was received with horror. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the Czech authorities continue to adopt an arrogant, bureaucratic, dehumanising and contradictory attitude towards the refugees. </p>
<h2>Charged for detention</h2>
<p>The social democratic prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, has <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/78768.html">said</a> that when detaining refugees, his country is acting strictly in line with international covenants and Czech law – but this is highly debatable.</p>
<p>Refugees have the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49da0e466.html">right</a> to enter the territory of other countries even without passports. States have a duty to provide protection for them when they do. And since many of the refugees entering Europe via the East seem to want to travel to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-opens-its-gates-berlin-says-all-syrian-asylumseekers-are-welcome-to-remain-as-britain-is-urged-to-make-a-similar-statement-10470062.html">Germany</a> anyway, there seems to be little reason to stop them doing so via Czech territory.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"638930886281592832"}"></div></p>
<p>Yet the Czech Republic detains the refugees for six weeks. Before detention, small children are <a href="http://www.lidovky.cz/breclav-v-pohotovosti-chvalim-obcany-volaji-kdyz-vidi-podezrelou-osobu-rika-starosta-gqn-/zpravy-domov.aspx?c=A150901_120353_ln_domov_sk">sent to Czech hospitals to be X-rayed</a> to determine their age from the level of development of their bones. While in detention, refugees have <a href="http://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/svedectvi-z-bele-zijeme-tady-ve-stresu-a-hadame-se-o-jidlo/r%7E01c27a8641b811e5b3730025900fea04/">complained of insufficient food</a>; they are kept incommunicado in secure detention centres, relieved of their belongings, and <a href="http://www.praguepost.com/eu-news/49432-german-press-czechs-keep-refugees-behind-barbed-wire">charged for their detention</a>. After six weeks, in line with the controversial EU <a href="http://www.righttoremain.org.uk/blog/germanys-suspension-of-the-dublin-protocol-a-welcome-display-of-european-and-global-solidarity/">Dublin protocol</a>, the authorities try to send the refugees back to the first EU country they entered. </p>
<p>Often, these countries refuse to take them, and so the Czech authorities eventually have to release them to continue their journey to Germany.</p>
<h2>Climate of hate</h2>
<p>Now this system has essentially failed, the Czech authorities have made a significant concession: they will <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/refugees-stranded-budapest-train-station-hungary">no longer incarcerate</a> refugees from Syria, but will let them continue their journey to Germany straight away. Any new arrivals from different countries, however, will have to continue to <a href="http://zpravy.idnes.cz/dalsi-syrane-opusti-uprchlicka-zarizeni-ffb-/domaci.aspx?c=A150904_090942_domaci_jpl">suffer the indignities of incarceration</a>.</p>
<p>Although the Czech Republic <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-eu-34128087">has only received 884 asylum requests this year</a> and Slovakia has <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/slovakia-muslim-asylum-seekers-eu-refugees-middle-east-north-africa/">agreed to take only a few hundred</a>, both countries are still in the grip of anti-refugee hysteria, which is irresponsibly fed by the media and politicians. </p>
<p>Refugees are depicted as a dangerous, threatening, foreign force that will destroy central European countries. One particularly heinous example is an advert broadcast on Slovak television by the chicken firm Hyza. </p>
<p>The advert begins with a happy Slovak family about to sit down to a delicious Slovak dinner. They are alarmed by a report on the television about ugly, diseased, foreign chickens entering the country in the back of cars. Mercifully, mum has been prudent enough to buy a “good quality, well trusted” Slovak chicken for their evening meal and all is well.</p>
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<p>Hyza is owned by the Slovak oligarch Andrej Babiš, who is also deputy prime minister and finance minister in the Czech Republic. Babiš has <a href="http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/378662-okamzite-uzavrit-schengen-a-zapojit-nato-navrhuje-babis-proti-uprchlikum.html">called for</a> the Schengen zone to be sealed, and for NATO troops to be deployed against the refugees. In an unfortunate coincidence, Hyza used to own the lorry in which 71 refugees suffocated in Austria. The lorry had been sold, allegedly for spare parts, and was obtained by people smugglers who kept the chicken firm’s logo on the side as camouflage.</p>
<p>This atmosphere of intolerance is constantly being fuelled by anti-immigrant activists and politicians. Inflammatory statements abound. In a recent <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/78698.html">video</a>, watched by 1.5m Czechs (15% of the Czech population), MP Tomio Okamura (who is himself of immigrant origin) railed against refugees, saying that “Muslims are uninvited intruders from an enemy culture will destroy our democracy and our freedoms.” </p>
<p>And indeed, a recent opinion poll by the Focus polling agency <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/78746.html">found</a> that 94% of Czechs demand that all refugees should be deported and the borders should be sealed. There are small groups of pro-refugee activists in the Czech Republic, but many remain hostile.</p>
<p>President Miloš Zeman defended “ordinary” Czechs by saying their anti-immigrant feelings “cannot be seen as racist or fascist” and has warned that “refugees will invite their relatives to join them” if allowed to stay. He <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/01/eu-migrant-crisis-refugees-tsunami-czech_n_8069350.html">compared</a> the refugee crisis to a tsunami: “I feel like a tourist on a beach in Thailand who is taking a picture of a small wave in the distance, not knowing that it will kill him.”</p>
<p>It’s hard to say exactly how central Europe came to be gripped by this hysteria and fear. A near-total lack of empathy is on display, cultivated by 25 years of neo-liberal, anti-communist right-wing regimes that have prevailed in the region over the past. </p>
<p>It is perhaps interesting that debaters in the Czech Republic constantly argue about what there is in it for them, should they accept refugees, but it never seems to enter their minds that they should actually help their fellow human beings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47122/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Culik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Czech police were condemned for writing numbers on refugees’ arms – but Central Europe’s problem with outsiders goes much deeper.Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/444962015-07-15T05:22:28Z2015-07-15T05:22:28ZFar-right reaches for new extremes in the Czech Republic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88367/original/image-20150714-21738-146k64s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C28%2C1276%2C887&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A far-right protestor carries a noose through the streets of Prague.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Right-wing extremists recently held a demonstration on Wenceslas Square in the centre of Prague, Czech Republic to protest against immigration into the country. They waved gallows and nooses and called for them to be used on “all traitors of the nation”. Those traitors, in their eyes, are the defenders of immigrants and the Czech government for pursuing what they see as pro-immigration policies. </p>
<p>Czech police did not act against the demonstrators carrying the gallows and nooses. They did, though, arrest six left-wing dissidents protesting against the demonstration.</p>
<p>This is probably the first time such extreme symbols have been used in a protest in the Czech Republic, which generally has a reputation for relative racial tolerance.</p>
<p>The Czech police issued a <a href="http://zpravy.idnes.cz/policie-resi-zda-mohou-byt-na-demonstracich-makety-sibenic-pny-/domaci.aspx?c=A150702_150511_domaci_kha%20">statement</a> saying the presence of the gallows and nooses was “a new phenomenon” and suggested that the law had not been broken. When criticised by the Czech Social Democratic home secretary <a href="http://zpravy.idnes.cz/na-demonstarci-se-objevily-sibenice-d69-/domaci.aspx?c=A150702_102641_domaci_aho">Milan Chovanec</a>, the police said that they would ask for expert legal advice <a href="http://zpravy.idnes.cz/policie-resi-zda-mohou-byt-na-demonstracich-makety-sibenic-pny-/domaci.aspx?c=A150702_150511_domaci_kha">“to analyse the problem”</a>. </p>
<p>Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka took a stronger line. He said the arrest of the left-wing demonstrators was <a href="http://zpravy.idnes.cz/postup-policie-byl-absurdni-rika-sobotka-k-sibenicim-na-demonstraci-11m-/domaci.aspx?c=A150702_201142_domaci_kop">“absurd”</a> and warned that the police must not tolerate intimidation of this kind. Sobotka added that he would not be intimidated and would press on with plans to take in <a href="http://www.bne.eu/content/story/czech-republic-plans-accept-1500-refugees-2017">several hundred refugees</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88391/original/image-20150714-21701-1xkbftd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88391/original/image-20150714-21701-1xkbftd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88391/original/image-20150714-21701-1xkbftd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88391/original/image-20150714-21701-1xkbftd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88391/original/image-20150714-21701-1xkbftd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88391/original/image-20150714-21701-1xkbftd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88391/original/image-20150714-21701-1xkbftd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The police failed to stop the protesters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Independent Czech lawyers later expressed the view that carrying gallows and nooses at a demonstration is indeed <a href="http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/374181-o-sibenicich-mela-mit-policie-jasno-mini-pravnici.html">illegal</a> under Czech law and that the police should have acted. Yet still no-one has been charged.</p>
<p>In the meantime, two more <a href="http://www.parlamentnilisty.cz/arena/monitor/V-Praze-proti-sobe-pujdou-dve-velke-demonstrace-Bude-asi-hodne-dusno-382405">large demonstrations</a> are due to be held in Prague on July 18 – one for and one against immigration.</p>
<h2>Intolerance in the mainstream</h2>
<p>These protests come against a backdrop of creeping Islamophobia in Czech politics. Martin Konvička, a biologist at the University of South Bohemia, has founded a political party called <a href="http://www.blokprotiislamu.cz/">The Anti-Islamic Bloc</a>, and plans to stand candidates in next year’s regional elections. Whether they will do well <a href="http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/374182-novy-okamura-nema-sanci-doufaji-politici.html">remains unclear</a>, but for the time being, the party is capitalising on fear about immigration to attract support. </p>
<p>Czech president Miloš Zeman has publicly expressed similar views, stating that he too, is <a href="http://www.parlamentnilisty.cz/arena/rozhovory/Milos-Zeman-pro-PL-Ja-take-nechci-islam-v-Cesku-pane-Konvicko-Agresor-je-ten-kdo-napadne-nejakou-zemi-drive-nez-USA-Americane-by-mohli-vyhynout-jak-brontosauri-381678">against Islam</a> in the Czech Republic.</p>
<p>Zeman won the direct presidential election in 2013, having run as a left-wing candidate who was highly critical of the then right-of-centre government. However, since his election he has made ever more controversial and ever more right wing, often very populist, public statements.</p>
<p>Recent international political developments, such as the war in <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ukraine">Ukraine</a> and the perceived danger of a wave of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/migrant-crisis">illegal immigrants</a> threatening to swamp Europe, have caused considerable confusion among Czech voters. As a result, the division between right-wing and left-wing attitudes have become increasingly blurred. Many left-wing activists in the Czech Republic now openly sympathise with the right-wing regime of Vladimir Putin in Russia, and many disaffected Czech citizens who would have considered themselves as left wing have now openly assumed a strongly anti-immigration attitude.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/373480-cesi-jsou-vystraseni-z-uprchliku-a-chteji-odvody-do-armady-silene-emoce-mini-stropnicky.html">government opinion poll</a> published June, 83% Czechs are seriously worried about the possible influx of refugees into the Czech Republic – even though the government has agreed to accept only a few hundred.</p>
<p>This shift in public attitude has been encouraged by popular media and social networks, which have normalised and legitimised racism and xenophobia. Many Czechs are experiencing disillusionment. After decades of being excluded from the stable and affluent West, they have finally been able to join, just as it seems to be destabilising in front of their very eyes.</p>
<p>At the same time, there seems to be very little informed, factual and rational debate to explain contemporary political and economic issues to the public and dispel their fears about immigration. That, in turn, enables scenes like those that took place in Prague to go ahead without sanction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44496/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Culik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anti-immigration protesters carried nooses through the streets of Prague as police stood by without acting.Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/436652015-06-24T11:57:59Z2015-06-24T11:57:59ZAnti-immigrant walls and racist tweets: the refugee crisis in Central Europe<p>While many citizens of Western Europe don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about taking in the refugees fleeing war and poverty in Syria, the crisis has provoked a remarkably strong wave of xenophobia and Islamophobia in the countries of Central Europe.</p>
<p>Hungary is planning to build a <a href="http://www.praguepost.com/eu-news/48421-hungary-s-anti-immigrant-fence-widely-condemned">four metre-high wall</a> along its border with Serbia in a bid to keep immigrants from crossing. This follows comments from Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who denounced an EU plan to resettle some of the refugees across member states as <a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sections/migrations/hungarys-pm-orban-calls-eu-refugee-quota-plan-mad-314457">“mad”</a>.</p>
<p>Orbán’s right-wing government has recently run a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33091597">poster campaign</a> warning immigrants not to take Hungarian jobs. When a group of five opposition activists defaced one, they were <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/hungarian-activists-anti-immigration-billboard-budapest">arrested</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly intolerant reactions to immigrants and refugees are also being voiced in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.</p>
<p>The European Commission is calling on the Czech Republic to take in around 1,300 refugees as part of the resettlement project. But the proposal has been emphatically rejected by politicians from both left and right. It has been received with remarkable venom on Czech and Slovak social networks, too, where anti-immigrant groups have attracted thousands of supporters.</p>
<p>When Milan Kohout, a former dissident artist under communism, appealed to common humanity on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICF36xjK5HM">Czech TV</a> and called for the refugees to be taken in, he found himself in a minority of one in the studio. He was later subjected to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meqR53-Klog">torrent of abuse</a> from viewers.</p>
<p>Bohuslav Sobotka, the Czech prime minister, seemed to be riding this wave of xenophobia when he <a href="http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/372521-sobotka-imigranti-mohou-polozit-evropu.html%20">warned</a> that the “immigrants may bring about the collapse of the EU”. The same week, <a href="http://www.parlamentnilisty.cz/arena/rozhovory/plukovnik-skacel-ucastnik-armadnich-misi-jsou-to-vetrelci-zadni-uprchlici-je-to-invaze-kterou-nekdo-ridi-aby-nas-znicil-nedojima-me-ze-se-utopili-379943">Pavel Skácel</a>, a retired colonel in the Czech army and a Czech participant in UN missions to Kurdistan and the former Yugoslavia, said the refugees were “intruders” and that he was unmoved by their drowning in the Mediterranean en route to Europe.</p>
<p>Sobotka has not ruled out taking in some refugees but he says the decision must be made in Prague, not Brussels. In the meantime, he wants the borders closed against migrants and has deployed border police to round up those who have tried to enter the country.</p>
<h2>Violent response</h2>
<p>Alongside this intolerance towards refugees, Islamophobia appears to be on the rise. An organisation called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ivcrn?fref=nf">We do not want Islam in the Czech Republic</a> currently has 137,000 likes on Facebook and regularly posts offensive, inflammatory content about Muslims.</p>
<p>When a group of foreign medical students complained about the group displaying an anti-Islamic message on the main square of the Moravian city of Olomouc, it claimed a “large group of Arab immigrants” had <a href="http://www.blesk.cz/clanek/zpravy-udalosti/321955/do-15-let-budete-nasi-otroci-kriceli-v-olomouci-arabove-kteri-napadli-stanek-s-petici.html">attacked its people</a>. The students claim they merely voice complaints about a sign depicting a crossed-out mosque.</p>
<p>Now the organisation has <a href="http://www.psp.cz/sqw/text/text2.sqw?idd=105664%20">presented a petition</a> to the national parliament, demanding that immigrants be barred from the Czech Republic. Sponsored by Martin Komárek, a member of parliament for the main government coalition party ANO, this document has received 145,000 signatures from the Czech public. </p>
<p>Local authorities in a number of Czech villages have <a href="http://blanensky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/lide-v-obcich-na-boskovicku-bojuji-petici-proti-planovanym-kvotam-pro-uprchliky-20150603.html">been informing citizens</a> about the petition and making it available to be signed on local authority premises, in local libraries and in pubs.</p>
<p>Against this backdrop, a young man verbally <a href="http://brno.idnes.cz/muslimka-obeti-slovniku-utoku-v-brne-dsx-/brno-zpravy.aspx?c=a150622_092251_brno-zpravy_tr">attacked a Muslim woman</a> in a supermarket in the Moravian town of Brno on June 20. He demanded that she should take off her scarf and threatened to decapitate her.</p>
<p>On the same day, a demonstration of some 6,000 right-wing extremists took place in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. The extremists chanted “Hang the refugees and the traitors in our government” and <a href="http://zpravy.idnes.cz/slovaci-v-bratislave-protestuji-proti-uprchlikum-fw1-/zahranicni.aspx?c=a150620_180236_zahranicni_kha">threw stones at a group of Saudis</a> with a pram.</p>
<p>Like in the Czech Republic, the Slovak government strongly rejects the EU resettlement proposal, although the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, has conceded that Slovakia might offer some help, primarily in Africa. In a recent survey, 70% of Slovaks said they <a href="http://zahranicni.eurozpravy.cz/eu/123614-fico-slevil-slovensko-je-pripraveno-pomoci-s-prilivem-uprchliku/">opposed</a> the refugee quotas.</p>
<h2>Why the venom?</h2>
<p>Xenophobic groups parasitically use fear of the unknown to stir up trouble, and this is what we are witnessing in Central Europe at the moment.</p>
<p>Few local people in the Czech Republic have had firsthand experience of immigration – and the Muslim population is practically nonexistent. During the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=a-NTBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176&dq=czech+republic+2011+census+muslim&source=bl&ots=der3D40v3_&sig=RTmirWsQdTuEvC8hkFxszokjSSo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Kn6KVfaLL8KosgHpmKQI&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=czech%20republic%202011%20census%20muslim&f=false">2011 Census</a>, 3,000 people living in the Czech Republic described themselves as Muslim.</p>
<p>Many former communist countries are home to fairly closed communities, which are largely dependent on local-language media for their information. Without public information campaigns to counteract the voices of intolerance, misinformation is spreading. </p>
<p>The sudden wave of anti-Islamic and anti-refugee hatred in Central Europe is surprising, nonetheless. Some commentators ascribe it to the rise of <a href="http://blisty.cz/art/77879.html">defensive nationalism</a> and a feeling of insecurity in a Europe where traditional stability seems to be under threat.</p>
<p>That might explain why Hungary wants to literally block the refugees from coming across its borders – and why the Czech government is issuing public warnings to immigrants. But it won’t stop them from coming.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Culik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With thousands dying in the Mediterranean, migrants and refugees have started coming to Europe by land. And countries in the East aren’t happy.Jan Culik, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/345742014-12-04T10:44:20Z2014-12-04T10:44:20ZPrague’s velvet: wearing off 25 years later<p>The United States had just gone through a bruising election, but in Congress Democratic and Republican leaders gathered to unveil <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/havels-bust-gets-place-among-greats-in-us-congress/2527328.html">the bust of Vaclav Havel</a>, the playwright and first post-Communist Czech president and only the fourth non-American to be installed in this hallowed space. John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi praised Havel as a champion of freedom and human rights who used truth to defeat his totalitarian opponents.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in Prague, the city where Havel staged the Velvet Revolution twenty-five years ago, the streets were filled with <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30086495">demonstrators</a> who thundered at Milos Zeman, the current president: “Resign! Resign!” and waved red cards, the kind used in soccer to eject a player who committed an egregious foul. <a href="http://www.praguepost.com/czech-news/42945-zeman-not-oblivious-to-drop-in-popularity">Opinion polls </a>show that the demonstrators represent two thirds of their fellow citizens who find Zeman to be a failure on the international scene and a divisive force at home. </p>
<p>How did it happen that the Czech Republic’s presidency declined from the universally respected Havel to the present low? For an answer we have to look at today’s Russia and the crisis in Ukraine.</p>
<h2>The new Prague-Moscow axis</h2>
<p>When Putin annexed Crimea and sent weapons and military personnel into eastern Ukraine, the United States and the European Union responded with sanctions. The shooting down of the Malaysian airliner <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17">MH17</a> hardened the Western response and caused some to speculate about a new cold war. </p>
<p>Inexplicably, President Zeman called on his EU and NATO partners to accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea on the grounds that the 1954 decree that transferred the region to Ukraine was “stupid.” He went on <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17">Russian television</a> and denounced the sanctions as counterproductive. As far as the fighting in eastern Ukraine was concerned, Zeman argued, the West had no right to interfere since it was a civil war. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66089/original/image-20141202-20591-90aqac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66089/original/image-20141202-20591-90aqac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66089/original/image-20141202-20591-90aqac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66089/original/image-20141202-20591-90aqac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66089/original/image-20141202-20591-90aqac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66089/original/image-20141202-20591-90aqac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66089/original/image-20141202-20591-90aqac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66089/original/image-20141202-20591-90aqac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Good friends.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vladimir_Putin_17_April_2002-2.jpg">www.kremlin.ru</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what about the weapons and troops dispatched by Putin, he was asked by then Swedish Foreign Minister <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TKY5RFvM2U">Carl Bildt</a> . None of that was true, he replied. He believed Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who stated that not a single Russian soldier had entered Ukraine.</p>
<p>Zeman’s apparent willingness to believe Moscow is difficult to comprehend: anyone familiar with Czech history in the 1930s cannot fail to see the parallels between Putin’s takeover of Crimea and the Nazi Anschluß of Austria in 1938. Hitler argued that it was only an administrative measure that corrected a historical fluke, and since all involved spoke German, it was a “family affair” that was of no concern to outsiders. Sound familiar? </p>
<p>Equally strong similarities can be seen between today’s eastern Ukraine and the 1938 Czechoslovak-German crisis in the Sudetenland. Regarding the latter, Hitler insisted that the Czechs “terrorized” the German-speaking Sudetens living in Czechoslovakia and he needed to protect them by seizing the territory.</p>
<h2>Controversial conference</h2>
<p>Then President Zeman took a further step that created a gap between the Czech Republic and its EU and NATO partners. In September he attended a conference organized by Vladimir Yakunin, a billionaire who heads the Russian Railways and is also widely believed to have been a KGB operative. Yakunin heads a movement called National Glory of Russia that aims to protect the country from the corrosive Western culture. This does not, by the way, prevent Yakunin and his family from owning a house in London worth millions of dollars. As one cyberwag put it: he hates everything Western, except money. </p>
<p>Zeman used this questionable forum to demand an end to Western sanctions and to assert that the Ukrainian crisis was merely “a flu.”</p>
<p>When he encountered criticism at home and abroad for such pro-Kremlin statements, Zeman was nonplussed. He dismissed Havel’s accent on human rights in foreign affairs as naïve and declared during an official visit to China that he came to learn how to “stabilize society.” As if <em>en passant</em> Zeman added that Taiwan and Tibet were inalienable parts of China. Havel, by contrast, was on friendly terms with the Dalai Lama and a champion of Free Tibet.</p>
<h2>Expletives on the radio and dissing American beer</h2>
<p>Apparently invigorated by further negative comments, Zeman stated in a live interview on <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/czechrepublic/11207812/Czech-president-shocks-nations-in-expletive-filled-interview.html">Czech Radio</a> filled with profanities that the imprisoned members of the anti-Putin Pussy Riot group were “whores” who richly deserved their sojourns to the Gulag. Regarding Russian oligarch and Putin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Zeman opined that if he disapproved of something Putin had done, it was that he had failed to dispatch all the oligarchs to prison. </p>
<p>For his latest performance at the end of November, Zeman chose Kazakhstan, where he promoted Czech beer by dismissing its American competitor as “<a href="http://rt.com/news/208459-zeman-beer-czech-filth/">dirty water.</a>” He then expressed his “unalterable view” that Ukraine should be “neutralized and Finlandized” under the tutelage of Russia, and never admitted into NATO.</p>
<p>Before he became president, Zeman - an economist by training who joined the Social Democratic Party after 1989, became prime minister in 1998 but then left politics for 12 years – held mainstream foreign policy views. What has happened, and why so suddenly? Why does he now have to be reminded by his own foreign minister that all decisions regarding the future of Ukraine belong to its citizens?</p>
<p>As happens often when confronted with mysteries, some have resorted to conspiracy theories. But the principle of <a href="http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html">Occam’s Razor</a> teaches that the simplest explanations tend to be correct. Here is mine. </p>
<p>When he compares himself to Vaclav Havel, Milos Zeman sees his own smallness. This propels him toward attention-seeking pronouncements and other forms of political exhibitionism. </p>
<p>It seems incredible that the unity of the West, and the legacy of the Velvet Revolution, should be jeopardized by a man struggling with his own insignificance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34574/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Igor Lukes has received several Fulbright and IREX grants. He is the Honorary Consul General of the Czech Republic in Boston. . </span></em></p>The United States had just gone through a bruising election, but in Congress Democratic and Republican leaders gathered to unveil the bust of Vaclav Havel, the playwright and first post-Communist Czech…Igor Lukes, University Professor, Professor of International Relations and History, The Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies , Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342602014-11-17T06:20:43Z2014-11-17T06:20:43ZCzechs and Slovaks still search for truth and love, 25 years after the Velvet Revolution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64585/original/m46srtwn-1415970475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gently overthrowing an oppressive regime in 1989.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Czechoslovakia#mediaviewer/File:Havla_1989.jpg">Irmojohnny</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the top of Wencelas Square on the front of the Czech National Museum in Prague hangs a giant poster depicting the playwright dissident and former president Vaclav Havel.</p>
<p>The poster has been hung, in part, to mark 25 years since the Velvet Revolution, or as it is known to Slovaks, the Gentle Revolution. </p>
<p>At the time, Czechoslovak citizens congregated on the square to jangle their keys and express their support for change. They were ready to end communist rule and move towards democracy.</p>
<p>The authorities had responded violently to a student demonstration on November 17 1989 so Havel and other intellectual dissidents had helped mobilise a series of <a href="http://www.rferl.org/media/photogallery/czechoslovakia-prague-velvet-revolution-communism/26689967.html">peaceful protests</a> in response. Within ten days, they succeeded in overthrowing one of Eastern Europe’s most repressive communist dictatorships. The clarion call was “<em>Havel na Hrad</em>” (Havel to the castle as president).</p>
<h2>Half full and a quarter empty</h2>
<p>Twenty-five years on, views on the events of 1989 are mixed. <a href="http://cvvm.soc.cas.cz/en/media/com_form2content/documents/c1/a7069/f3/pd141111a.pdf">Polls</a> from Czech research institute CVVM and Slovakia’s IVO reveal only 61% of Czechs and 51% of Slovaks view the events of that autumn in a positive light. What’s more, 12% of Czechs and 18% of Slovaks express unambiguously negative views of the end of communism.</p>
<p>The magnitude of the achievements of Czechs and the Slovaks in the past quarter of a century should not be underestimated. The post-communist challenge of democratisation, marketisation, state-building after the break-up of Czechoslovakia and integration into Western structures such as NATO and the EU were hard enough. Then these small export-orientated economies have had to cope with the credit crunch and the woes of the eurozone crisis too.</p>
<p>In many respects, the Czech and Slovak Republics seem better placed than some fellow EU member states in Western Europe to cope with the challenges of the 21st century. Citizens overwhelmingly value the freedoms brought by the end of communism. They enjoy open access to information, the ability to express their opinions and the opportunities to work, study and travel abroad that were not possible before the revolution. But ask them about social values, crime and employment and their answers are very different.</p>
<p>There is a certain discontent that stems from a sense that the promises and aspirations expressed during the heady days of November 1989 have only partially been delivered. Some citizens – especially the less virtuous ones – have benefited considerably more than others. It is difficult not to turn on the TV news or open a newspaper in either country without being regaled with the juicy details of the latest <a href="http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/35157/2/another_sns_minister_another_dodgy_deal.html">corruption scandal</a>. Politicians and businessmen have been able to use their connections – some of which were forged in communist times – to strike lucrative deals that pay well for them but less well for the state.</p>
<p>And perhaps the most striking finding of the CVVM/IVO research is that Czechs, and particularly Slovaks, see little or no improvement in terms of equality before the law. This suggests a strong sense of disenchantment with the post-communist judicial and legal system.</p>
<h2>Party politics</h2>
<p>The disillusionment with politicians has fuelled support for a steady succession of new parties. In the 2010 Czech elections, for instance, a new party called <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15705854.2014.945254?journalCode=rpep20#.VGjvvlesUhI">Public Affairs</a> called for an end to “political dinosaurs”. The message struck a chord with voters and the party was propelled into a coalition government. The victory was short lived though, as Public Affairs crumbled under the weight of its own corruption scandals.</p>
<p>Then in the 2013 elections, another new party with an anti-corruption appeal performed well enough to secure prominent portfolios in government. The ANO is founded and led by the billionaire businessmen <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/andrej-babis/">Andrej Babis</a>, who is now deputy prime minister of the Czech Republic. His party seeks to appeal to voters not just by opposing corruption but by pushing the cult of the expert. </p>
<p>Babis is an attractive option because he has demonstrated his ability to succeed in business after 1989 and might, therefore, be seen as more capable of running the country more effectively than a career politician. But Babis faced years of criticism over allegations that he acted as a security agent for the Communist regime. And while he eventually <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/slovak-court-says-andrej-babis-wrongly-labeled-communist-agent-1403787683">cleared his name</a>, his struggle acts as a reminder that while 1989 may have marked a change, the slate was not wiped entirely clean.</p>
<p>In 1989, Havel proclaimed that “truth and love must triumph over lies and hatred”. A generation later, for both Czechs and Slovaks, truth and love appear to have gained the upper ground. Lies and hatred remain though – and perhaps more significantly disillusionment persists.</p>
<p>Havel’s image on the front of the National Museum will not be there forever, but the health and quality of democracy in the Czech Republic and Slovakia are dependent on a new generation of citizens willing to fight for the truth and love that formed the basis of his protest back in 1989.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Haughton has received funding in the past from the Nuffield Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation. </span></em></p>At the top of Wencelas Square on the front of the Czech National Museum in Prague hangs a giant poster depicting the playwright dissident and former president Vaclav Havel. The poster has been hung, in…Tim Haughton, Reader in European Politics, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/258482014-05-07T05:09:31Z2014-05-07T05:09:31ZEU election: fresh faces expected after quiet Czech campaign<p><em>Citizens in 28 countries will go to the polls to vote for the European Parliament this month. To test sentiment across the EU, The Conversation has assembled a team of experts from across Europe to write about how the election is playing in their countries.</em></p>
<p>In the Czech Republic there is hardly any sign that the its third EU election is about to take place. Compared to the national elections there are few billboards around streets, no TV debates, no ads in newspapers, and no big issues to discuss and debate. </p>
<p>Probably only those people who are really interested in politics and in European integration and of course, the politicians themselves, really care. </p>
<p>Surprising? Not really. European elections were never popular in the Czech Republic, which in both previous cases have traditionally followed pan-European patterns: very low turnout, second-rate candidates and a strong preference for domestic issues over the European ones. </p>
<p>And, Czech voters are being asked to attend their third elections at national level in 16 months. In January 2013 they <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21210495">voted for their first directly elected president</a> and last October there was an <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/jan-horn%C3%A1t/czech-election-with-consequences">early parliamentary election</a> after the government collapsed in the summer. Now voters are being called upon once again.</p>
<h2>Voter fatigue</h2>
<p>People are fed up with politics – and, such a short time after the parliamentary elections, there is little for them to discuss issues. There’s a clear shortage on the supply side as well: political parties are financially exhausted by the previous campaigns and cannot pump in much money to keep voters engaged. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47442/original/8kjwhxnw-1398873009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47442/original/8kjwhxnw-1398873009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47442/original/8kjwhxnw-1398873009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47442/original/8kjwhxnw-1398873009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47442/original/8kjwhxnw-1398873009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47442/original/8kjwhxnw-1398873009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47442/original/8kjwhxnw-1398873009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47442/original/8kjwhxnw-1398873009.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Europa.eu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ruling parties are much more consumed with their domestic agenda and disputes. The opposition is fragmented, and needs to recover from its heavy losses in the October 2013 parliamentary election. Probably the biggest issue is championed by the Civic Democrats, formerly the ruling party prior to October 2013, which is focusing on keeping out of the Eurozone and keeping the koruna, the Czech national currency. But given that no one is seriously thinking of getting rid of the koruna, this isn’t exactly a pressing issue.</p>
<p>While we can’t expect any substantial changes from this very low-profile EU election, we can confidently predict two things. One is that there will probably be a very low turn-out – in the region of about 20%. The other is that the few voters will send a whole new set of politicians to Brussels. All indications are that the lion’s share of seats will be probably won by the new political movement <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/03/31/czech-eurosceptic-parties-are-likely-to-be-pushed-to-the-side-lines-by-andrej-babiss-ano-movement-in-the-upcoming-european-elections/">ANO</a> (an acronym that means “Yes” in Czech) that has not so far been represented in Brussels. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47445/original/dx8r6w7h-1398873253.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47445/original/dx8r6w7h-1398873253.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47445/original/dx8r6w7h-1398873253.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47445/original/dx8r6w7h-1398873253.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47445/original/dx8r6w7h-1398873253.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47445/original/dx8r6w7h-1398873253.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47445/original/dx8r6w7h-1398873253.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47445/original/dx8r6w7h-1398873253.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">CVVM poll taken April 29. Comparisons are with 2009 results.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">metapolls.net</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ANO movement, whose list is led by a former member of the European Commission, <a href="http://praguemonitor.com/2014/02/24/ano-approves-teli%C4%8Dka-its-ep-election-leader">Pavel Telicka</a>, will probably send between six and seven new MEPs including former diplomats and lobbyists. Seats in Brussels will be probably also secured by another two new parties: the <a href="http://en.top09.cz/">conservative TOP 09</a> and the populist, anti-immigration <a href="http://praguemonitor.com/2014/04/29/pr%C3%A1vo-dawn-opens-immigrants-theme-ahead-ep-elections">Dawn of Direct Democracy</a>, each of which is expected to achieve three MEPs. And – as many current MEPs representing the two traditional biggest Czech parties (the Social Democrats and right-wing Civic Democrats) aren’t running for re-election (or are polling so badly that they are highly unlikely to be re-elected) – we can guess that around three-quarters of Czech MEPs will be newcomers.</p>
<p>Because the new set of MEPs that will head to Brussels after this election is likely to be so fragmented and polarised, it’s hard to imagine that they will be able to have a bigger say in the European Parliament. But it will be interesting to observe the patterns of co-operation among the Czech political parties and the various parliamentary groupings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25848/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vít Hloušek has received funding from the EU Seventh Framework Programme for Research and from the Czech Science Foundation (GACR).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Petr Kaniok receives funding from the European Commission and the Czech Science Foundation.</span></em></p>Citizens in 28 countries will go to the polls to vote for the European Parliament this month. To test sentiment across the EU, The Conversation has assembled a team of experts from across Europe to write…Vít Hloušek, Associate Professor of Political Science, Masaryk UniversityPetr Kaniok, Assistant Professor, Masaryk UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.