Volume 10 Number 4

Fall 2001

Constitutional Watch
     A country-by-country update on constitutional politics in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR

Czech Republic - The political landscape of the Czech Republic has not changed dramatically over the last few months, in the lead-up to next year's elections. Given widespread popular disenchantment with the two primary parties-the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSDP) and the Civic Democratic Party (CDP), which have shared power uneasily since 1998 under an opposition agreement despite their marked ideological differences-the focus is now on the Four Coalition. In late October, one of the two major coalition members, the Freedom Union (FU), signed a merger agreement with one of the coalition's two minor parties, the Democratic Union, in order to avoid the 20 percent threshold requirement for coalitions of four parties. Now, as a coalition of three parties, it will need only 15 percent of the vote to enter parliament.

Competing versions of an electoral-reform bill were put forward over the last few months, in the cabinet, the Senate, and the Chamber of Deputies (Poslanecka Snemovna). The government and Senate bills would establish 14 electoral districts nationally, with proportional representation established according to the d'Hondt system. The controversial component of these proposals, however, has to do with the minimal electoral threshold required for parliamentary representation. There are three competing proposals for calculating this threshold: the cabinet proposal calls for a 5 percent minimum per party, including coalition members, so that a four-party coalition would require 20 percent; the proposal that passed the Senate, on August 9, calls for a 5 percent threshold for single parties, 7 percent for two-party coalitions, 9 percent for three-party formations, and 11 percent for alliances of four or more parties; and the proposal submitted in the Chamber of Deputies by the Four Coalition would establish the same 5 percent threshold for parties and coalitions of any size. The government's proposal would obviously disadvantage the Four Coalition and might precipitate further changes in the alliance's structure if enacted. A new electoral law must be in place by February in order for parliamentary elections to be held on schedule next summer.

In June, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross (CSDP) discovered that 117 civil servants, the majority of whom were employed in the Ministry of Defense, held false lustration certificates issued in 1991-92. All civil servants were to have been screened between 1991 and 1993, to clear them of any involvement with the communist secret police or of having held senior positions in the Communist Party. Senate Deputy Chairman Jan Ruml, who was a deputy interior minister when the certificates were issued, has been called to account for the false certificates. He belatedly admitted to having known about the false certificates at the time but disavowed any responsibility for their issuance. This scandal served to highlight the harsh differences of opinion among politicians on the issue of lustration, and it sparked intense political debate about continuation of the policy. Some see lustration as an important process for preserving national memory and preventing members of the old regime from regaining influence; opponents object that it may have been appropriate to an earlier moment in the transition process but now only serves to open old wounds.

President Vaclav Havel, who has been critical of the lustration act since he signed it into law in 1991, said the country now needed "other instruments to cope with its totalitarian past." He added that one of the problems with the process is that many people participated in the activities of the secret police against their will but would be considered culpable just the same. Some politicians, however, have seized the opportunity to push for the complete declassification of all secret police files. On August 9, a Senate bill was passed to extend access to the files to all citizens over 18. Under the current law, passed in 1996, only individuals on whom files were kept have access to their own personal files. The government has rejected the Senate bill on the grounds that it infringes on the rights to privacy afforded by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Indeed, wider accessibility to the files would conflict with the spirit of the lustration law itself, which sought to protect the identity of those who underwent the lustration process. A group of deputies suggested an alternative, based on the German model of the Gauck Commission, that could oversee the vetting process without compromising the privacy of individuals.

The long-running legal battle between US investor Ronald Lauder and Czech media magnate Vladimir Zelezny over TV Nova seemed to come closer to resolution in September, as two arbitration rulings, albeit contradictory, were handed down. In the first, a London arbitration court unanimously rejected claims by Lauder against the Czech government for failing to protect his investment. However, one week later, an international-commerce arbitration court in Stockholm ruled that the Czech government had failed to safeguard the interests of Lauder's company, Central European Media Enterprises (CME), under the terms of a Dutch-Czech investment treaty. Lauder's company was incorporated in the Netherlands. The court ordered that Lauder be compensated fair market value for his share of TV Nova, estimated at $500 million. According to Prime Minister Milos Zeman, the Czech government is considering an appeal, though it is unclear whether such recourse is available under international law. Zelezny was handed a personal legal setback by a Prague city court, on October 24, when it upheld a lower court ruling that Zelezny's property could be seized to pay off a 27 million crown debt owed to CME.

In other media news, on June 26, the Chamber of Deputies passed a new media law, overriding a presidential veto, that would automatically extend the licenses of private television and radio broadcasters for 12 and 8 years respectively. Havel had vetoed the bill, arguing that it would hinder competition by making it difficult for a new broadcaster to enter the market.

The struggle over the fate of the Temelin nuclear power plant has persisted over the last few months, although the official process of assessing its environmental risk may be coming to a close. The plant was brought back on-line on August 12, after having been shut down, on May 3, due to leakage and turbine vibrations. Subsequently, the plant was forced to shut down repeatedly throughout August and September due to malfunctions.

Opposition to the plant has been vigorous and widespread, coming from both domestic sources and from the governments and citizens of neighboring states. Austrian activists have staged repeated protests against the plant, including blockades at border crossings. Separate complaints were filed against Temelin in June with the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic by a group of Czechs residing near the plant and by the local governments of neighboring Austrian provinces. Under the agreement reached at Melk, Austria, in December 2000, neighboring countries have input into the process of assessing the environmental risks of Temelin. Germany and Austria have both pressed their claim against the plant in the European Parliament and the EC throughout the assessment process, at various times threatening to link the issue to the energy negotiations for EU accession.

On July 9, the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee approved a draft resolution calling for consideration of Temelin's complete closure. The resolution included compensation to the Czech government for the costs of closure. However, the EU commissioner for enlargement, Guenter Verheugen, asserted that the EU had no authority over Temelin. He has relied on the framework agreed to at Melk and has called for an emphasis on maximizing safety standards. On October 19, Verheugen sent a letter to the Czech prime minister and the Austrian chancellor calling for the official closure of the Melk process by the end of November. The letter stated that "all safety concerns have been eliminated."

Temelin has caused other problems for the Czech Republic, interfering with its plans to privatize the state-owned CEZ utility, which owns and operates the plant. On August 13, Europe's second largest power company, E.On of Germany, declined to bid on CEZ as long as Temelin was included in the deal. E.On had earlier bowed to public pressure in Germany, mounted against Temelin, and stopped purchasing power from CEZ.

The issue of Roma rights came to the fore again in connection with a recent controversy involving the establishment of British immigration controls at the Prague airport designed to screen people traveling to Britain. The British government instituted this policy, on July 18, in response to what it called the "systematic abuse of our immigration and asylum system by some Czech citizens." However, the screening process immediately came under attack from Roma-rights groups, charging that it constituted blatant racial discrimination. The controversy came to a head, on July 23, when a Romany journalist, Richard Samko, was denied permission to fly to London while an ethnic Czech journalist who gave the same answers on the screening form was allowed through. The journalists devised this plan to test the screening process for racial bias.

The British policy also came under criticism from Czech opposition parties, as a compromise of national sovereignty. The British government discontinued the screening process on August 9, only to reinstate it on August 27, despite the growing opposition within the Czech government. The Czech government was forced to allow the policy in the end, faced with the threatened alternative of visa requirements for all Czech citizens traveling to the UK. According to the Czech government, all of the 6,000 asylum applicants from the Czech Republic to Britain in the last five years have been Roma. These applications were based on claims of racial discrimination and violence, the existence of which is substantiated by recent reports from Amnesty International and the Open Society Institute. However, both the Czech and British governments suspect that the majority of Roma asylum claims are bogus, driven by economic motives rather than racism.

In late October, after months of discussions, the Czech Republic closed the chapter, in its negotiations regarding the EU acquis communautaire, devoted to the free movement of labor, bringing the number of chapters provisionally closed to 21. However, the Czech Republic was forced to capitulate to EU demands for a transition period of up to seven years during which labor mobility would be restricted. When Hungary closed this chapter in June, accepting the transition period, Czech officials had complained that this gave them less room to maneuver. For months, they insisted that Czechs would never accept second-class status in the EU. In the end, the only concession they won was the right to impose a reciprocal ban on labor mobility from EU countries into the Czech Republic. However, some EU countries, including Spain and the Netherlands, have already declared unilaterally that they will not impose the transition period.

In other progress toward EU membership, the Czech Senate narrowly approved a bill, on June 28, to put EU accession to a referendum. The bill must now be approved by a three-fifths majority of the Chamber of Deputies. On October 18, the Senate approved a constitutional amendment that would pave the way for EU membership by recognizing international agreements as Czech law, superseding domestic law in cases of inconsistency.

In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Czech President Vaclav Havel pledged that "we are ready to assist [the American people] in any way within our power." Shortly after Havel's speech, the Czech government informed the American intelligence community that one alleged hijacker, Mohammed Atta, met with an Iraqi intelligence agent, Ahmad Chalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, in Prague in April 2001. (This information was made public, on October 26, by Interior Minister Gross.) At the time, Atta was living in Germany and apparently traveled to Prague as a tourist. Czech intelligence noted the meeting because al-Ani was under surveillance for espionage; he was expelled later that month under suspicion of planning an attack on the Radio Free Europe headquarters in Prague. While the Czech government has not indicated publicly the purpose of the meeting between Atta and al-Ani, this announcement fueled speculation that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks or in other acts of terrorism, including the outbreak of anthrax poisoning in the United States, allegations which Iraq has denied.

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