William Nattrass

Dare Poland stand up to the EU? The leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party Jaroslaw Kaczynski announced on Saturday that the country’s controversial disciplinary chamber for judges, the subject of a long-running dispute with the bloc over the ‘rule of law’, will be disbanded. The climbdown seems at first glance to be a humiliating defeat for the Polish government in the face of pressure from Brussels. The European Court of Justice gave Poland until 16 August to disband the disciplinary chamber. Politicians in Warsaw say the chamber is a means to root out corruption but the ECJ believes it undermines the independence of the Polish judiciary.

Will the EU stand up for eastern Europe? This question is now being asked by Ukraine following the announcement of a deal between Germany and the USA which paves the way for the completion of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and western Europe. The deal reached by Merkel and Biden may have placated critics in Washington, but it has failed to allay eastern European concerns over the security implications of the project. The state most affected by Nord Stream 2, Ukraine, has now requested urgent consultations with the European Commission and the German government, adding an air of legal weight to its complaints by invoking provisions of its ‘Association Agreement’ with the EU.

‘The EU has a dictatorship growing inside of it,’ proclaimed Guy Verhofstadt on Monday afternoon, while calling for an EU inquiry into the ‘Pegasus’ scandal, which has exposed the potential Hungarian misuse of state surveillance on anti-government journalists, media owners and businesspeople. The ‘Pegasus Project’, a multinational investigation led by the French non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories, suggests that investigative journalists critical of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s regime (along with independent media owners and government-critical businesspeople) were the subject of phone hacking in recent years.

This week, Hungary defied Brussels and refusing to back a joint EU declaration on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The bland EU statement calling for an end to the violence was underwhelming in itself – but with Hungary rejecting the bloc's ‘one-sided’ approach, Brussels has been left embarrassed by its inability to coordinate a unanimous response to the fighting.

‘Putin is a murderer,’ read the signs carried by protestors outside the Russian Embassy in Prague on Sunday. On Saturday night, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš stunned the Czech Republic by stating that evidence now links Russian GRU secret agents to a massive explosion which killed two people at an arms depot near the Moravian village of Vrbětice in 2014. Czech Minister of the Interior and acting Foreign Minister Jan Hamáček gave 18 diplomats known to be linked to Russian foreign intelligence 48 hours to leave the country, and compared the situation to the Salisbury poisoning in 2018.

Change is coming in the European Parliament. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Polish leader Mateusz Morawiecki, and Italian Lega party leader Matteo Salvini held a meeting in Budapest this month to discuss the establishment of a new, conservative European Parliamentary alliance. Forged after the withdrawal of the Hungarian Fidesz party from the centre-right European People’s Party, Salvini claimed the new coalition is intended to 'make Europe great again'. The trio have agreed to meet for further discussions in Warsaw in May. The aping of Donald Trump’s slogan suggests an attempt to replicate his brand of conservatism in Europe.

A joke is doing the rounds in the Czech Republic that the world’s highest Covid mortality rate can, in actual fact, be found in the Czech Ministry of Health. Yesterday, the Czech health minister Jan Blatný was dismissed, the nation’s third ‘Covid Health Minister’ since the pandemic began. Both his predecessors were sacked by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in the autumn of 2020. Rumours of Blatný’s departure had been in the wind for weeks. But his fall from favour seems to have little to do with the Czech Republic’s inability to contain the spread of Covid-19, and far more to do with the ongoing controversy over whether the country will join regional allies Slovakia and Hungary in buying the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

March was a dark month for Slovakia. Covid cases and deaths in the country were among the highest in Europe, while political tensions reached breaking point this week with the resignation of Prime Minister Igor Matovič, after the country controversially purchased Sputnik V vaccine doses. Following disputes within the ruling coalition over the decision to depart from the EU’s vaccine strategy, Matovič agreed to trade places with the Minister of Finance, making him the first European leader to fall victim to ‘vaccine diplomacy’ amid concerns about a shift eastward in Slovak foreign policy. Matovič’s fall is particularly painful given the wave of optimism which swept him to power in last year’s elections.

In 2018, the Czech President Miloš Zeman promised in a speech on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel to do everything in his power to move the Czech embassy to Jerusalem. Last week, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš finally opened an official diplomatic office in the Holy City. With Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu claiming that Israel has ‘no greater friend in the Eastern hemisphere’ than the Czech Republic, the move has underlined Central Europe’s divergence from the EU when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The official Czech Embassy still remains in Tel Aviv – but the nation has gone against EU policy by becoming the bloc’s second member to open an official diplomatic branch in Jerusalem.

The Covid-19 situation is rapidly deteriorating in the Czech Republic, with new efforts to stop the spread of the virus descending into bitter rows and a climate of cynicism and fear. In a government press conference held late on Friday night, harsher measures were announced to tackle the alarming spread of the ‘British variant’ of coronavirus in the Czech Republic. These restrictions included the closure of more shops and services, the closing of primary schools and nurseries, the reintroduction of mandatory face mask wearing outside, and a ban on movement between municipalities. Cases and deaths have risen to new heights in recent weeks, leaving Czech hospitals on the verge of collapse.

A new party is riding high in the Czech Republic, with the wind of change in its sails. Polls now suggest that the Czech Pirate Party, in coalition with a collection of mayors and independents, could win the largest share of the vote in the Czech Republic’s October elections. It’s a remarkable turnaround for a party that at first sounds like the Czech answer to the monster raving loony party. But the Pirate Party has become a force to be reckoned with in Czech politics. Formed in 2009 as one of many Pirate Parties around the world who came to international prominence following a police raid on the download site The Pirate Bay, the Czech Pirate Party was for a long time seen as a fringe movement.

With Central and Eastern European countries still gripped by Covid-19, the EU’s slow vaccine rollout has offered little solace in the region. The light at the end of the tunnel seems far away, leading many to wonder whether the answer to vaccine shortages lies not in Brussels, but to the East. Interest in Russian and Chinese vaccines is certainly fast becoming a diplomatic issue for the region. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš recently caused a stir with two international visits. The first was to his Visegrád Four ally Hungary, the second to non-EU Serbia, far and away mainland Europe’s vaccine leader: Babiš suggested both trips were made with the intention of working out what these countries’ vaccine programmes got right.

Countries around the world are in a race against time to vaccinate their populations against Covid-19. But there is one particular region which appears to have a growing problem with vaccine scepticism: Central and Eastern Europe. As a British expat living in the Czech Republic, I have noticed the lack of eagerness with which many Czechs discuss the vaccine rollout. This may in part be due to the country’s floundering and much-criticised vaccination programme. But it is noticeable that anti-vaccine sentiment is more common – and gets much more attention – here than in the UK. Ex-President Václav Klaus recently told a large anti-lockdown rally in Prague that vaccines are not the solution to the virus.

The bad boys of Europe are at it again. The EU has been attempting to tie budget funds to members states’ adherence to the rule of law. This has been rejected by Poland and Hungary, leading to the latest in a long line of conflicts between Brussels and the conservative Central European countries. But looking at the issue in a wider regional context, it becomes clear that this is not just another diplomatic spat, but part of a wider trend. The liberalism of the EU is now facing a serious ideological opposition from the entire ‘Visegrád Four’ bloc of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The latest dispute over the rule of law mechanism could have been seen coming.

When the pandemic first hit, other countries turned to the Czech Republic for lessons in how to deal with Covid-19. But while the country coped relatively well back then, the second wave has been rather more brutal.  The Czech Republic now has the highest rate of Covid-19 infection in Europe and one of the highest in the world. A new daily record of 9,544 cases was set yesterday; just a few weeks ago, 500 new cases a day was cause for concern. The death toll has now risen above 1,000, over 2,500 people are in hospital with Covid-19, and almost a quarter of all tests performed come back positive. During the 'first wave' in the spring, the number of patients in a serious condition peaked at 100; now it is almost 500.