Current Affairs 'Atmospheric disturbance' possible but no storms ahead for Czech-German relations
The final days of campaigning before the weekend's presidential election were marked by a bitter row over the postwar Benes decrees that legitimised the expulsion of three and a half million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia. Certainly 'the German card' appears to have played a role, if not a decisive one, in the election of Milos Zeman over Karel Schwarzenberg - an aristocrat who spent four decades living in Austria and whose Austrian wife doesn't speak Czech. Mr Zeman's campaign rhetoric has upset some in neighbouring Germany and Austria - but what impact will this have on relations between Czechs and their German-speaking neighbours? Peter Brod is a Prague-born journalist who spent many years living in Bavaria.
Miloš Zeman, photo: CTK
"I don't think this sort of row will have any lasting impact on
relations between the Czech Republic and Germany or Austria. There may be
some atmospheric disturbance at the beginning of the Zeman presidency, but
it has to be said that the foreign policy is laid down by the government in
the Czech Republic. The president, although his role is now disputed in the
constitutional sense, because he now has a direct mandate from the people,
certainly does not have a mandate to formulate foreign policy. And I think
most of the people in Germany and Austria who have been following this
debate in the Czech Republic realise that it's largely an internal debate,
that it has no real impact on the relationship between the states, at the
inter-state level."
But of course the president has a degree of wiggle room when he goes abroad and speaks in seminars and official meetings and speaks to journalists. Certainly Mr Klaus was quite creative with his loosely-defined role in Czech foreign policy. Do you think Milos Zeman will pay attention to what the government tells him to say and do abroad? Or will he be a bit more creative as well?
"Well I think if you look ahead at the upcoming presidency of Milos
Zeman, there won't be the element of anti-European scepticism that was
brought into Czech politics by Vaclav Klaus. Milos Zeman is known to be a
European integrationist or federalist if you want, and he's somebody who's
in favour of European integration. Also, Mr Zeman - a leftist - is of a
different political persuasion than the centre-right government, so there
will be a certain tension between President Zeman and the government. But
here the constitution comes into play, and that as I have said gives the
guidelines of foreign policy into the hands of the government, not the
president."
As I'm sure you're aware there was an editorial in Die Welt newspaper calling on the German government not to invite Mr Zeman to Berlin. Obviously it's an influential newspaper, do you think editorials of that type have any influence at all on German policy or will they simply be ignored?
Bundestag, Berlin, photo: Klára Stejskalová
"I think they're taken into account but they're largely ignored in
terms of what the actual government policy is. Berlin will invite Milos
Zeman - they have no reason not to - he has not in fact engaged in any
actual anti-German rhetoric, as has been insinuated by both the article in
Die Welt which you've mentioned and in another article in Die Presse of
Vienna, also an influential newspaper. No, he was careful not to attack
Germany, and he has no reason to attack Germany. After all, he was on very
good terms for example with German Social Democratic chancellors, and he
has no reason to attack the current state of official Czech-German
relations, because both governments maintain they're at the best level
ever. I think Milos Zeman will not depart from that line, despite his views
of certain historical phenomena, like the Benes decrees and the expulsion
of the Sudeten Germans after the second world war."
