Czeching in: The Czech View of EU Expansion
15th Apr 2004
In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously referred to Czechoslovakia as “a far-away country” of whose people “we know nothing”.
The Munich Pact that followed effectively sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia for the next 60 years – first, as a German protectorate and then as part of the Cold War Soviet bloc. Following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the Czechs split with their less Western-orientated Slovak cousins as they strove to re-establish what they perceived as their natural position – that of a vigorous, highly developed and educated, “normal” western society at the heart of Europe.
The Czechs joined NATO in 1999 and on 1 May of 2004 the Czech Republic will be amongst the ten countries to accede to the European Union. Festivities to mark the occasion will include an official celebration in Prague’s National Theater and an open-air public party in the city’s historic Old Square. Elections for the country’s 24 Euro MPs will be held in mid-June, with campaigning already under way.
If the country meets the criteria and chooses to do so, the CR can adopt the Euro around 2008-2010. Many stores, including Tesco, already accept payment in Euro; some McDonalds restaurants have been taking Euro and US dollars for several years.
Accession has required the adoption of approximately 12,000 EU directives, comprising roughly 40,000 A4-sized pages. Of the current EU member states, only the UK and Ireland have not applied restrictions that bar workers from the CR and other new member states for up to a seven-year transition period. Other EU citizens will be eligible to work in the CR, but the Czech government has left itself free to take measures should a problem occur with the labour market. With, however, the often bi- and multi-lingual Czechs having sharpened their skills and competitive edge through training and travel abroad, Western workers are no longer as sought after as they were in the early 1990s.
Despite the fact that over 50% of those eligible voted in the referendum for EU membership, with roughly three-quarters of them in favour, many Czechs entertain a degree of apprehension about the EU. The chief concerns are fears of inflation – which have helped to fuel the current boom in housing and new mortgages – and possible job losses and company closures as a result of stronger competition. A survey released in March by the Center for Public Opinion Research revealed that only 10 percent of those polled anticipate an improvement in their standard of living after the country joins the EU, while over 40 percent expect things to get worse after 1 May.
Currently, the CR attracts the highest per capita level of foreign investment in central Europe. There is certainly a danger that this will decline as the CR loses one of its key attractions to outside investors – cheapness – to cheaper countries to the east.
In anticipation of this, the government’s economic-development agency, CzechInvest, has made attracting more research-oriented, high-tech investors a priority. According to the Prague Post, in 2002 CzechInvest and the Ministry for Industry and Trade launched a programme of incentives for high-tech investors, which paid off in 2003 with deals for ten projects worth 11 billion Czech crowns, involving major multinational companies such as DHL, ExxonMobil, Olympus and Honeywell. CzechInvest is said to expect such projects to account for one third of its deals in 2004 with aeronautics, biotech and electronics cited as “particularly promising sectors”.
Some investors, such as automakers Toyota, Peugeot, and Citroen, as well as the world’s largest biotech company, US pharmaceuticals giant Amgen, have been attracted to invest in the country as a base to an enlarged EU, with the benefit of the CR’s highly educated and multi-lingual skilled work force.
EU entry - with the psychological advantages and predictability that membership bestows - has also given a boost to the Czech tourism industry. Air traffic to the Czech Republic is up 17%, with the national airline, ČSA, steadily increasing its routes, and more carriers from all over the world arriving in Prague.
When I first visited the Czech Republic, the cheapest form of transport between London and Prague was an overnight bus that stopped in the dead of night at a deserted service station – which meant that the only available “facilities” were in the surrounding field. Today, the amenities on Czech highways are comparable to any found in neighboring countries and, in the wake of the low fares offered by several airlines, one can make the Prague-London journey by air for the same price as that bus trip. Holiday-makers are ever-present in the streets of the historic cities. Never again will a British – or any other European – prime minister be able to describe the Czech Republic as a faraway, unknown country. The Czech Republic is now definitely taking its place once more at the heart of Europe.
Barbara Wells is a freelance writer and editor. Her varied career has seen her work in New York, London (where she graduated with an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics) before finally settling in Prague, and joining the Going-there YourGuide team in the city.
