Meet the New Europe; Same as the Old Europe

Czechs voted overwhelmingly this weekend to join the European Union, 77 percent to 23 percent. The referendum came on the heels of Poland's enthusiastic yes vote (75-25) the weekend before, and leaves just Latvia and Estonia among the 10 new EU countries to await public ratification. Bloomberg has a useful analysis of what this all might mean.

The Bohemian and Moravian EU-philia exceeded nearly every prediction. "The Czechs were alone," reported the New York Times' Peter Green, "in facing a determined 'maybe' campaign, led by their new president, Vaclav Klaus, a self-described 'Euroskeptic.'" Who convinced them otherwise? The media.

In fact, analysts said it was only a determined last-minute campaign by the country's independent news organizations that brought to the voting booths many voters who, the polls indicated, had planned to stay home.

As voting began on Friday, the country's leading daily newspaper, Mlada Fronta Dnes, ran the single word "Ano" ? Czech for yes ? across the top half of its front page.

You can read a translation of the "Ano" editorial here.

Comments

[joe]

Andrew Sullivan is furious. I cannot understand how the way our fellow democracies choose to order their internal policies is supposed to equal a national security threat for us.

[holger viking]

this is what it was like in Denmark with Denmarks Radio (National Radio and Television Chanel) and TV2 which is semiprivate, being enthusiastically in favour of Ja votes. Euroskeptic articles are only to be found in leftist papers such as Information. There is no bourgeois antiEU counterbalance.

[Croesus]

LE BOURGET, France: Airbus announced a mega order from Emirates at the Paris Air Show yesterday, stealing the thunder from leading aircraft maker Boeing in a deal that backs the European company's vision of the future of civil aviation.

[david f]

hej Holger Viking!

are you danish or one of the other types of scandinavian?

but you note the dangers of state run tv and how all opinions seem to get destilled.

even though many of us complain about bill orielly (see above h&r), that's proabaly a sign of healthy market-itis.

mvh,

drf

[Croesus]

The paranoia in the Sullivan article was hilarious. Oh no! A United Europe! A counter-weight to the US! Another bloc of countries exercising world power! Run away!

I also thought the lie about Iraq being France's "client state" was equally humorous. Iraq was the USSR's client state, dumbass.

[James Merritt]

Human language is a strange thing. In Czech, "Ano" means "yes." But in Spain, "ano" (no tilde) means ... well, let's just say that it is a synonym for "member of the arrogant, authoritarian EU drover class."