Lack of English speakers embarrasses Czech coalition
When a new five-party coalition took office in the Czech Republic a week before Christmas, it was expected to herald a reaffirmation of the country’s Europhile and western credentials after years of ambivalence and hedging under an outgoing populist government. Instead, the new administration – headed by Petr Fiala, a former political science professor who replaced the former oligarch Andrej Babiš as prime minister – has found its carefully crafted outward-looking image tarnished by embarrassing revelations about its members’ poor English-speaking skills.
The disclosure, by the Hospodářské Noviny newspaper, has raised concerns about how Fiala’s government will cope when the country assumes the rotating EU presidency in July, a responsibility that challenges the ability of ministers to communicate with foreign politicians.
It has also triggered a bout of soulsearching on a deeper issue: how a nation that threw off the shackles of communism more than 30 years ago and whose language is little spoken or understood beyond its borders may have failed to acquire the skills needed to interact with an increasingly interconnected world.
Such a failing would sit ill with the “return to Europe” philosophy espoused by the late Vaclav Hável, the playwright-turned-dissident who became the president of Czechoslovakia after the 1989 velvet revolution that presaged communism’s downfall and whose liberal credo the new government has publicly embraced.
Hospodářské Noviny discovered that several key ministers were linguis
tically unequipped to don that mantle after investigating whether a pledge by Fiala’s Spolu [Together] grouping – the coalition’s senior faction – to “ensure that every member of the government knows at least one foreign language that they can easily speak” had been met.
Five out of 18 cabinet ministers admitted to possessing either only “tourist level” or little English and said they would rely on translators in European gatherings – an approach commentators deride as inadequate because it overlooks the importance of face-to-face contacts at informal sessions, where translators are generally absent. Some ministers said their working English was reliable – including, ironically, Jan Lipavský, the new foreign minister, whose appointment the Czech president, Miloš Zeman, unsuccessfully tried to block on the alleged grounds that he was academically unqualified. Others failed to respond.
Among those acknowledging weak English skills were Jana Černochová, the defence minister, who will be expected to attend Nato summits, and the finance minister, Zbyněk Stanjura, although both claimed knowledge of Polish and Russian, the latter a legacy of the communist past when Moscow’s regional hegemony made it compulsory in Czech schools.
Stanjura’s plight is deemed particularly disadvantageous as he will chair the Ecofin council of finance ministers that meets to discuss important financial and economic issues.
His incapacity recalls the fate of his predecessor, Alena Schillerová, who was widely criticised after being filmed walking away after a Czech television reporter asked her a question about European finance policy in English and who read speeches in English at EU meetings from a script with stilted pronunciation. It was later explained that she had limited English knowledge.
Although some ministers claim to know German, Petr Kaniok, an associate professor specialising in European affairs at Masaryk university in Brno, said English would remain the EU’s working language despite Britain’s departure from the bloc due to Brexit. The inability of many Czech politicians to communicate in it harmed the country’s interests and fuelled Euroscepticism, he added.
“We have people who want to be MPs or hold public office who don’t pay sufficient attention to their language skills,” said Kaniok. “That’s surprising because it’s more than 30 years since the velvet revolution and people holding public office are around their 50s, so they’ve had enough time to prepare language training.
“Since Czechia joined the EU in 2004, it has been very defensive, especially compared to the Baltic counties [Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia] or Sweden, Finland or the Netherlands, which have similar population sizes but are very active in European policy. It’s partly because of different language skills. It’s a huge problem which is damaging Czech EU policy.”
Although fluent English-speakers are common in the Czech Republic – a country of 11 million people – the language’s limited currency among politicians reflects a broader cultural lack of interest in events beyond its borders, according to Jan Čulík, a lecturer in Czech affairs at Glasgow university.
“Many Czechs find themselves extremely comfortable at home and don’t display much interest in what is going on outside, despite the fact that for almost 400 years, the political situation in their country has always been shaped from abroad,” he said. “Politicians who have not displayed any interest since the fall of communism in what is going on beyond their own small Czech linguistic patch cannot realistically understand what is going on around them. Their attitudes will of necessity be parochial, limited and wrong.”