Review of the Czech EU Policy in 2019/2020

Vít Havelka presents a review of the Czech EU Policy in the last year. He focused on EU Top Jobs, Single Market & Economic policies, Justice and Home Affairs and Foreign and Defence Policy.

Executive Summary

• Czech EU policy has been rather passive, and it has not managed to significantly influence European discourse. On the other hand, Czech negotiators can be very successful if they pick one issue, focus there their attention, and avoid ideological discussions.
• EU Budget talks can be considered as a success for the Czech Republic. Czech negotiators managed to navigate between competing sides and win tangible concessions
• EU Top Jobs negotiations were unsuccessful. The Czech Republic aligned itself to close to its V4 partners, and it did not set clear goals for its negotiating team.
• The Czech Republic practically withdrew from PESCO cooperation. It has not been active since the change of the government in 2017 and continues to do so.
• The Czech Republic took part in many new initiatives, however, it did not succeed in influencing the overall European narrative.

You can read the full review using the PDF button on the right side.

Vít Havelka
Research Fellow

Expertise: EU institutional relations with member states, europeisation, transformation role of EU