Respekt: ČR's opposition to EU unreasonable

Prague, Jan 3 (CTK) - Many Czechs believe it would be best not to open their country to the outside world, Erik Tabery has written in the weekly Respekt's latest issue, adding that the number of people supporting the EU membership has been falling although nothing proved that it would harm the Czech Republic.

Czech top representatives take a reserved stance on projects moving the European Union towards closer integration.

Unfortunately, it is a long tradition that Czech politics is based on feelings rather than facts, Tabery says.

He recalls that 80 years ago Czech press dealt with the question of why are Czechoslovaks so unpopular and incomprehensible for the rest of Europe. This could be seen in sport matches in those days, for example: foreigners always rooted for the Czech rival, he adds.

Josef Schieszl, who cooperated with then Czechoslovak president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, wrote in 1931 in the Pritomnost magazine that the Czechs act like a boy who tries to win attention by pestering because they are narrow-minded and not as culturally developed as the large nations with their old cultures, Tabery says.

Czechs believe they would save the world by their preaching and if they cannot give a lecture, they ruin instead of working hard, Tabery quotes Schieszl as saying and indicates that the statement applies to the present situation, too.

The Czechs paid dearly for their incomprehensibleness later on, Tabery says, hinting at the Munich Agreement due to which Czech border areas were handed over to the Nazi Germany in 1938.

The Czech Republic currently suffers from economic problems, but unlike the 1990s it is unclear what the country really wants, which is even worse, Tabery writes.

It seems hard to believe that the Czechs consider themselves the tigers of Europe in the early 1990s, he notes.

He says it was clear to all what the Czech Republic sought then: economic and political reforms moving the country from the position of a Soviet satellite back to European civilisation, and NATO accession.

The Czech president, government, parliament and social elites agreed on their stances on major issues in the early 1990s, Tabery points out.

But he says some phenomena, such as an unwillingness to let foreign owners privatise Czech banks, foreshadowed the further development in the country.

Vaclav Klaus, who was prime minister in the mid-1990s, admitted to the Lidove noviny paper in 1998 that big Czech banks had not been privatised because the government feared that a privatised bank would start taking a cautious approach, Tabery recalls.

He says foreign banks would have not liked to finance pointless projects, support the coalition parties and various plans of persons close to top politicians.

The result of the isolationist road is well-known: banks went bankrupt and the Czechs had to pay hundreds of billions of crowns, Tabery writes.

He says the Czechs should finally acknowledge that they are not alone in Europe and that they can only profit from it.

Tabery gives Poland as an example for the Czech Republic. He says the British prestigious magazine Prospect considers Poland clearly the best of the ten countries that joined the EU in 2004 and reminds that Poland is a strong power in the EU now.

German entrepreneurs have found out that the Russian market is not as interesting as it seemed and they want to more focus on countries like Poland, Tabery says.

All this is possible mainly because the Poles managed to give up their Euroscepticism, he concludes.