Günter Verheugen will be 80 years old this week and his memory is still working fine. Without hesitation, he reached for events and actors from the time 20 years ago, when he was the European Commission for Born. He was the first to return to Europe in 2004. In an interview with HN and Aktuln.cz, Klov recounts the moments of his journey to the Union.
You always said the town was crazy. You were also part of the team that wrote the Czech-German declaration from 1997. Why did you, as a fallen German, hate Czechia in particular?
I started eating it in 1968. In May 1968, I decided with a few friends, students like myself, that we would go to Prague by car. We wanted to witness the burst of spring, we wanted to see it with our own eyes. So we set off. I will never forget the trip. The mood in Prague was unpleasant. the hunter got the impression that nothing was impossible. It was fantastic.
You are the author of the myth that the European Union will accept ten countries at once. What led you to promote such a big birth?
When I joined the European Commission in 1999, there was no accession strategy. The principle of the regatta applied, i.e. that each team enters at the right time and will be prepared. That was very stupid. There were 12 countries behind the two EUs, and it would kill the union for many years to come if it were to break up by a hundred every other year.
Would all ten newcomers from 2004 (a pair of Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007) be in the EU today if the union did not fall apart at once?
Tko ct, what if. I thought that it would not make sense to exclude a candidate country, so Estonia would enter you, but not neighboring Latvia. Or esko yes and slovakia no. I said that we could try to organize the birth so that all the new states could participate in the elections to the European Parliament in June 2004. The date of entry then had to be a little later. When I first said it, almost no one believed it would work. My good friend, Anna Lindhov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said to me at the time: Günter, I’m sorry, but you’ve gone mad.
Who did you have to protect the most?
The most difficult thing was always to convince colleagues of the European Commission.
From specific countries?
It had nothing to do with their lands. In those days, the commission was full of others. Strong personality. Very unhinged. Self-conscious. I mainly remember the Dutch Eurocommissioner Frits Bolkestein, a radical liberal and supporter of the market. Or Franz Fischler from Austria, a great supporter of European agriculture.
Did they oppose birth?
They were not opposed, but caused, so to speak, problems. When my people told me that everything is in order and we can continue to negotiate with the country in question, they drank and said, this and that is a mistake, we cannot support this and that. They were nron. I negotiated a deal, and by that time I was dependent on their support and their service.
When you used to go to the eska, you evaluated everyone who didn’t drink the law, everything was carefully monitored. a lot of people in the new countries thought at the time that the EU was too small. The first major crisis after birth was then caused by economists fixated on the state of their economy, not by money. Did you like us a lot?
I am absolutely sure that we had the right approach. Criticism that we were singing songs came from the new ones, and from the old ones that we were singing mkc.
For me, the key was not to allow the public in the Polish cities to get the impression that we do not follow clear rules and do not approach things the same, because then they would not accept births. And it didn’t come to that.
Sudett Germans have long protested against the entry of the Czech Republic into the EU due to the existence of the Bene decree. How different was the trip to the EU from your point of view?
It was a problem. Not for the commission, because it was not a problem from the point of view of the European first. But politically it looked dangerous. Conservatives from Bavaria and Austria managed to organize support against the Czechs in the European Parliament and demanded that they declare Bene’s decrees illegal and unjust, otherwise you will not be allowed into the union. Descendants of the Germans expelled in 1945 lost possession of their property and tax, and had representation in their countries.
How did you deal with it as a birth committee?
I repeatedly spoke to the representatives of the individual factions in the European Parliament and warned them. I told them that the decrees had their first basis in the Potsdam Agreement and that we would open the Pandoin gap if we included the agreement on borders in Europe from 1945 in one of them. There was a white debate for some time, but in the end only a handful of people voted against the entry of the Czech Republic in the European Parliament . You yourselves have declared President Benee’s decrees to have lapsed. Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber was not satisfied at the time and said that after accession he would put the decrees on the EU agenda and “they will have to listen”. Nothing happened.
I am very glad that the by-product of the issue of input is that we managed to get rid of this problem.
et politicians worked with the dark decree several years after the entry. In 2009, Vclav Klaus conditioned his signature under the Treaty of Lisbon on the declaration of the inviolability of the Bene decree. How are your memories of Klaus?
Very hard and stubborn. He considered the European Union to be an open power, a big problem for national sovereignty. Our meetings were always relatively short and cold.
How do you remember Milo Zeman or Vladimr Pidła, prime ministers with whom you dealt with from the position of the birth commission?
Much better in both cases. Milo Zeman – and I know that he was later questioned and criticized in your country – really did a lot to get Czechia into the EU.
What specifically? Even Milo Zeman played with the fear that he is a descendant of the Sudeten Nmc of being robbed of his property, it helped him win the presidential election in 2013.
That’s how Milo Zeman could be stubborn. But as the leader of the opposition he stood up for the Czecho-German declaration and then as prime minister he made a very generous gesture to Austria. lo about the agreement from Melk about Temeln. Rakuan claimed that it was a dangerous power plant, they didn’t want to let your dream into the union. With the Melk Agreement signed by Milo Zeman, Austria gained unique access to information about the power plant and a system of cooperation was established. You didn’t have to do it stupidly, it was and is your duty to use nuclear energy first. At one point, the German Minister of the Environment spoke up and called Temeln “a pile of rubble”. That’s when I got really nervous that the whole thing would collapse.
Why should she?
Because this could lead to a new cross-border conflict that would endanger the birth. I called German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, my party leader, and told him that this is unacceptable, we have to stop the criticism. He did it.
Some politicians from Western Europe fear that the birth of the EU for a post-communist country was a mistake. that we have not enjoyed our sovereignty enough and the result is the struggle for the national veto in the V4 countries and elsewhere. How is the vnzor?
I know these German and other voices. I am angry. It is often the fault of the people who criticized me 20 years ago that I was slow as a commission for the birth of children. I don’t take it vn. Do you think the situation in central Europe would be more stable without the union? if the economy were stronger? Definitely not. Elections do not always have a satisfactory result. In 2004, Hungary was the milk of the vech. The Iron Curtain got there first, so everyone admired Hungary and wanted to have it among them. Who could have guessed in 2004 how the earth and its leadership would develop? The problem of nationalism and the greed of sovereign rights is not, however, a phenomenon that is specific only to the new state of Poland. Try Austria or Italy.
In recent years, Viktor Orbn has been blocking EU decisions wherever he can. Will it be necessary to change the rules so that one leader does not hold another as a hostage?
Viktor Orbán will soon die and then we will have someone else. This is inevitable in our system. There are only a very limited number of issues where unanimity applies, but in my opinion it is for the good of things. It is a certain type of protection. You can’t imagine how quickly support for European integration would disappear in Germany or the Netherlands if unanimity in the European budget disappeared and the majority of poor EU countries decided how much the Germans had to pay. Perhaps we could use the rule that was used in international relations, namely the consensus is always minus one. It would be useful in the long run, I think.
Do you support the birth of the EU about Ukraine? In an interview for FAZ, you said that Ukraine received a “political discount” for the agreement with the EU. What exactly did you mean?
Both the decision, i.e. the granting of the status of a candidate country and the decision to withdraw from one, are certainly symbolic in the case of Ukraine. It’s completely against the rules.
Against what rules?
Against the rules of naming new len. There are criteria embedded in the contract that must be met. In the case of Ukraine, there are doubts about democracy, about the first state. About endemic corruption, about oligarchs who have not only economic, but also media and political power. And then, that land is in the train and its restoration will cost a lot of money. Are you up for it?
Ukraine will not join the EU. Do you not agree that geopolitics and the security interests of Europe should take precedence over the procedural rules of the Union?
You can do it, but then European integration will be changed. The internal market would collapse if uncontrolled Ukrainian goods entered it. What you can do is create a kind of secondary plus. I have nothing against it.
In your opinion, she shouldn’t be the first female?
I am for its entry, otherwise the free continent will not be complete. However, the first process is different for good reasons. Making a political process out of it, giving Ukraine that political concession, is risky. For us
Gunter Verheugen
A politician originally from West Germany, a German Social Democrat and a former European Commission member. He is most famous for his work as a member of the European Commission for Children (1999–2004). He is the father of the myth of entering ten countries at once, he often traveled to these countries and paid for a political celebrity in them. Pot served as a commission for industry. In 2016, Milo Zeman awarded him with the blessing of the lion for his help in the Eskimo accession to the EU. Verheugen goes to Potsdam and talks about European integration.
We started echoes, let’s end them. What did we give to the EU according to you?
I once said that there are places in the world in skepticism. You are a skeptic in every way. You are a people with certain experiences, you have reasons not to see things right away. I personally like that. And what did you pin? You are stable and efficient only. I think that’s what happens when you look around.
Do you know Andrej Babie?
No, I don’t know. I’ve never heard of him.
Really? He is a former and possibly future Czech prime minister, entrepreneur.
Wait, didn’t he have a scandal?
I had a problem with steth e.g.
Yes, this is it. A very rich hunter, eh?
Yes, in Germany I own a bakery, a fertilizer and chemical factory.
I have never met him and there is no news about him here in Germany. But I have a question: What did Milo Zeman do? Is he that sick?
It’s on a cart, but it works. He just published a new book, and he has an office in Prague.
And does he drink jet?
k se, eu no. Do you remember him, did he drink?
He drank a lot. I saw him drunk many times. he often bought me a becherovka for our one animal, which, by the way, I never liked. But he was not the only one among the high-ranking politicians who drank.
Why are you asking that?
I should go to Esk in the foreseeable future and I would like to visit Miloe Zeman. So therefore.
