How should we view the fact that the Czech government parties have put forward a motion expressing opposition to this gathering of Sudeten Germans planned for Brno the weekend after next?
“I think it is basically just a political game.
Jiří Pehe|Photo: Ian Willoughby, Radio Prague International
“The government parties, above all the Freedom and Direct Democracy party of Tomio Okamura, are misusing this convention of the Sudeten Germans in Brno for their own political purposes.
“There is basically no reason to do that. First, it is the local government in Brno that has the right to decide whether this event will take place; the government on the central level or the Parliament have no right to intervene.
“Second, this is an issue that has been solved through dialogue.
“The Czech Republic and Germany have been involved for many decades in dialogue about World War II and the events that followed, including the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans.
“The Sudeten German organisations are no longer demanding the abolition of the Beneš decrees, under which the Sudeten Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia.
“So this is to a large extent artificial.
Sudeten Germans|Photo: Muzeum dělnického hnutí/e-Sbírky, National Museum in Prague, CC BY-NC-ND
“We will see how the much this will work on the level of national politics.
“In the past we know it did work, for example during the presidential election campaign in 2013, when Miloš Zeman used the question of Sudeten Germans against Karel Schwarzenberg.
“But now we have had 10 more years of more dialogue and developments – and I don’t see how this will add too many voters to the camp of Freedom and Direct Democracy, in particular.”
Prime Minister Andrej Babiš says that some people in Czechia regard the idea of holding this congress as a “provocation”. Other politicians have used stronger language that critics could consider fear-mongering. If that approach is actually working on the Czech public, what do you think it is that some Czechs are actually afraid of here?
The Nazi Occupation of Czechoslovakia|Photo: Wikimedia Commons
“I think that there is an ever smaller group of Czechs who are afraid that the Sudeten Germans could ask for some kind of retribution or the return of property on so. Or they feel that this is a moral question, because we should not be reconciling with the Germans in light of what Germans did to the Czechs during World War II.
“But this has been the subject of many discussions; there is a Czech-German forum for dialogue about these questions.
“Also Germany has become one of the main allies of the Czech Republic. It is the biggest export market for Czech industries.
“And to engage in this kind of fear-mongering is really risky, because we have seen some negative reactions in Germany.
“They don’t understand why this is such a big problem, or why it is being misused or why the prime minister allows the extreme-right Freedom and Direct Democracy to misuse it.
“So I really think that it’s all very unnecessary and it’s an artificial problem, after 35 years of Czech-German dialogue.”
If this assertion is correct and Mr. Babiš is allowing Freedom and Direct Democracy to misuse the situation, why is he doing that? Why is he letting them set the agenda in this way?
Andrej Babiš|Photo: Zuzana Jarolímková, iROZHLAS.cz
“Well, Mr. Babiš has a more general problem, and the problem is that he needs Freedom and Direct Democracy and the Motorists, the other party.
“He needs them for maintaining his majority. He knows if they left the government, it would fall and he would have problems forming another government.
“He basically makes a lot of concessions, which he didn’t do during his first mandate, when he was governing together with the Social Democrats, with the support of the Communists, between 2018 and 2021
“So he’s a hostage, to some extent.
“The question is whether there are any boundaries which he may not want to cross, because this may be damaging to his own business interests.
“Mr. Babiš, as you know, is an entrepreneur. He has firms in Germany and some significant investments in the country, and in general he needs good trade relations with Germany.
Markus Söder and Andrej Babiš|Photo: Government office of the Czech Republic
“So if he allows this to go too far, it may actually damage relations with Germany.
“This convention of the Sudeten Germans is supposed to be attended by the prime minister of Bavaria, Markus Söder, and also by Germany’s minister of internal affairs. And both of these politicians will probably be wondering what’s going on.
“And of course it will have some repercussions for Czech-German relations.”