How the reactions of the Czech Republic and France represent the 21st century (tribute to Publius)

Publius has written an amazing comment on the behaviour of the outgoing and incoming French and Czech EU-Council presidencies with regard to the present Gaza conflict.

I am sure that my English translation cannot capture the tone of the original (I am open for suggestions!), but it will allow those of you not too familiar with the French language to understand the main message:

[...] One of the best identified difficulties of social life is to prevent the worst actors among its members to act with precipitance in the hope to stand out in doing so. The will to succeed in politics is nothing but the most recent proof of the egomaniac right of the least considerate to be the first to cry wolf. Europe, at least originally, had the goal to protect the least powerful member states from the infelicitous and unreflective initiatives of their powerful neighbours. Let us thank France and the Czech Repulic, from now on the members of what will have been the last Troika in European history, to show to us that the solutions of the 50s - made for the people of the 50s -, which put up the proper respect of neighbours to satisfy their interests based on the founding principle of social life, are for sure not appropriate anymore for a 21st century that puts up individual success as the etalon [i.e. standard; JF] of moral life

[Remark JF: Publius has slightly changed the text later on. This translations is based on the first version.]

Tony Barber in the Brussels Blog of the Financial Times goes in the same direction - but far less expressive.

The Czech EU-Council Presidency (4): A good start vs. Amateurism from the beginning

While for Daniel Antal from the Central Europe Active blog, the Czech EU-Council Presidency will be a good opportunity for Central European positions to be recognised by the rest of the Union, and the first statements made by the Czech minister of foreign affairs Karel Schwarzenberg go in the right direction, Jean Quatremer of Les Coulisses de Bruxelles sees nothing but amateurism from the Czech side:

The spokesperson of the Prime Minister Jiri Potuznik has issued a statement ("The Israeli attack on Gaza is 'defensive'.") which is not in line with the official EU position and that is discussed in the blogosphere and has been reproduced intensively on the global media scene. The statement has later been qualified by the Czech foreign minister as a "personal mistake" of the Prime Ministers spokesperson. Sometimes, "good intentions" and "good results" are quite opposed brothers...

Quite a bad start, one could argue. So it is not surprising that the restless former Council President Sarkozy wants to go on its own mission to the region.

(Update:) Jon Worth is also amazed about the mess ...