When Jean-Claude Juncker seemingly insulted Theresa May, by allegedly stating she was nebulous (which he didn’t), she made a beeline for Juncker, confronted him right there and then, and settled the issue.
When Xavier Bettel seemingly insulted Boris Johnson yesterday, by refusing to move a press conference to a more tranquil setting, BoJo made a beeline for the exit, not once looking back.
Continue reading The Hulk, Dead In A DitchPoor Czechs. They can’t even have a proper senior political turf war without those pesky Slovenians beating them to it. Imagine being in charge of Czechia’s foreign policy, seething over another one of your president’s solo trips to badlands and mulling a response, only to see your counterpart in Ljubljana do the exact same fucking thing, an hour earlier.
This is broadly what happened to Czech FM Tomáš Petříček while he was looking for ways to undo the damage president Miloš Zeman did during his visit to Belgrade where he said that he will push for de-recognition of Kosovo by Czechia. However, Zeman wasn’t the only president of a Central European country facing pushback from his foreign minister that day. Cue Borut Pahor. Obviously.
Continue reading Turf WarThere is little doubt that Janez Lenarčič will be a very good European Commissioner for Crisis Management. There is even less doubt that Slovenian prime minister Marjan Šarec does not – to use a popular phrase – give a flying flamingo about which portfolio Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in the end assigned to Lenarčič.
In fact, it seems that rather than seeing them as missteps, PM Šarec decided his recent EU-related faux pas were in fact great successes and were to be repeated rather than avoided. Talk about learning the wrong lesson…
Continue reading Commissioner of Last Resort (part deux)