Prague WebwatchThe May Day weekend was wild but reaction to EU entry surprisingly mild
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From the United Islands of Prague festival to the annual Čarodejnice and May Day celebrations to the ongoing World Ice Hockey Championship and, finally, to the midnight fireworks celebrating Czech accession to the European Union, it was a lively weekend in Prague, to say the least. Prague TV has some pictures here. You’ll see a lot of people singing and dancing and having a good time, but taking the long view, perhaps the most notable thing about the weekend EU celebrations is that they were so damn subdued. The entry of the Czech Republic and its post-communist neighbors was, after all, the most talked-about future political development between here and Vladivostok for well over a decade. Yet I didn’t see anybody jumping for joy. Why not? The answer is pretty simple, and political analyst (and former advisor to Václav Havel) distilled it quite nicely in an essay penned last year on "Eastern Europe’s EU Fatigue." The much-heralded enlargement process, Pehe writes, “turned into a dull exercise, in which the ultimate benefits of introducing EU legal standards became blurred in the minds of ordinary people by the complex process of adopting the acquis communaitaire that made the EU appear a bureaucratic monster.” He says acquis communaitaire, we say tomato. More recently, a pall fell over the enlargement process when, one by one, numerous EU countries announced a “transition period” before citizens of the new member states would be allowed to move to Western Europe and work there, hassle free. So much for “free movement of labor,” one of the biggest perks of EU entry and one of the four fundamental freedoms upon which the EU itself is supposedly based. And then there’s Václav Klaus, the president, who with every passing day makes less and less a secret of the fact that he despised Brussels and everything it represents. On his blog, Doug Arellanes provided a translation of a recent essay Klaus wrote last month for Mladá fronta Dnes warning the Czechs not to “get lost in the EU.” With little more than a week to go before EU entry, the professor intoned gravely, “Not everyone may know that in a few days our country will cease to exist as an independent and sovereign entity." Meanwhile, Klaus’s eminent rival and predecessor, Václav Havel, barely minced words by telling Klaus himself to get lost. "I sometimes hear fears that Czech entrance to the European Union will influence our sovereignty,” he wrote. (Gee, where might you have heard that?) “I am convinced that this entrance above all decreases the power of the post-communist economic mafia men, flim-flammers and financial acrobats, as well as their political protectors.” Damn! Václav totally called Václav a flim-flammer. (Translation also provided by Arellanes, whose blog has become a go-to point for personal observations of Czech EU entry. Read the bit about the Spanish TV crew running around Old Town Square trying to find a Czech person. They couldn’t.) Havel makes a pretty good point, and it's a view that's common, if not widespread, among the Prague intellectuals that Klaus and his cronies drove from the Castle. This particular position on the EU – basically, “Heck, it’s better than having Czechs politicians in charge” - was expressed almost as eloquently last year in the final issue of the Prague Pill by sculptor David Černý: “Anything that can be done that will weaken domestic political power is good.” Besides, one might ask, what is this “sovereignty” of which you speak? Recent announcements by the United States with regard to Iraq have shown that it’s a pretty fluid concept. So, whether you think EU expansion sees the Czechs joining their rightful place among the European family of nations, or whether you think it represents the submersion of Czech national sovereignty into a pernicious European “superstate,” try not to let the anti-climax get you down. Just remember: “Žižkov will be a luxury residential area.” * Speaking of festivities, don’t miss the weekend BBQ party at Tulip Café this coming Sunday. Starts at 3pm., and it’s all you can eat and drink.
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Article added on Thu 6th May, 2004 [last updated Thu 6th May, 2004]Share this page 
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