WORLD> Europe
Czech president: Czech presidency not likely to influence EU
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-10-27 10:36

PRAGUE -- The Czech Republic's upcoming presidency of the European Union will not be very significant and it will not influence the EU functioning, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said in a discussion program on Prima TV on Sunday.

According to Klaus, EU presidency is important if some large countries as Germany or France hold it, but smaller countries as the Czech Republic do not enjoy such influence in the EU.

"You know very well that no one has noticed that small Slovenia presided over the EU in the first half of this year. Simply nothing happened there since the small country has no political power to influence anything," Klaus said, adding that the situation during the six-month Czech EU presidency in the first half of 2009 would be similar.

Some Western politicians these days questioned the Czech Republic's ability to chair the EU during the worldwide financial crisis. They also pointed to the well-known Euroscepticism of Klaus and politicians from the senior ruling Civic Democrats (ODS).

Klaus pointed out that Europe is controlled by four powers -- Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

"These four big countries influenced the situation in Europe some 80, 70 years ago, they do it today as well and they will probably always do so," Klaus said.

This is why the Czech Republic should not pretend to be able to change anything during its EU presidency, he added.