Nothing changes, it seems. Just like 2008, 2009 promises to bring yet more Russian sabre-rattling and European fears about the continent’s long-term energy security.

Also time to welcome in the Czech EU presidency. With the Czech Republic currently being run by the neoliberal, eurosceptic Civic Democratic Party of President Václav Klaus and Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek – a party that’s already begun to align itself with Declan Ganley’s new anti-Lisbon Treaty Libertas movement – it could prove an interesting six months.

With the EU still stuck in a deadlock until the Irish question is sorted, will Klaus – increasingly a hero of the eurosceptic right EU-wide thanks to his repeated anti-EU pronouncements (even calling for the EU to be scrapped altogether back in 2005) – be able to use his elevated position over the next six months to advance the eurosceptic cause?

Substantive posts soon, honest. I’ve got a real-world deadline for the 5th, though, so need to prioritise.

Handy overview today from the EU Observer – worth a look for UK-centered readers as well, as these guys are the closest that Tory leader David Cameron’s got to allies on the continent, so may just provide a hint as to his as yet decidedly unclear attitude towards the EU:

A large segment of the Czech political elite makes no secret of its discontentment with EU membership. These politicians fiercely oppose further European integration, and consider the whole European project a major threat to Czech sovereignty.

President Klaus – by far the most outspoken eurosceptic in Central-Europe – made no secret of his pleasure at the Irish No. While the office of the Czech president is largely honorary, his signature is needed to round up the ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty…

More significant however is the fact the president still has considerable influence on a large segment of the Civic Democratic Party. After the Irish referendum the harsh language of Mr Klaus was echoed by several party members. CDP holds a majority in the Czech Senate where voting on the Lisbon Treaty still needs to take place.

The vote in the Czech Senate is scheduled at the end of the year, after the Constitutional Court has ruled on the compatibility of the Lisbon Treaty with the Czech constitution. Even if its verdict is positive, it is hard to predict the outcome of the vote in the Upper House.

I’m not convinced by the latter half of the article with its dire warnings of potential disaster if the Czechs vote Lisbon down, but still – worth a gander. (And if anyone knows of any English-language Czech politics blogs/news sites that are still being updated, I’d be grateful for a heads-up, as I’ve got rather out of touch over the last few years and a lot of my old bookmarks are now dead.)

In amongst some otherwise predictable poll findings, Cold War hero and former Czech president Vaclav Havel gets a brief mention. It’s the first time I can recall his name cropping up in relation to the job – but God damn, he could be ideal.

Yes, being a 72-year-old two-time cancer sufferer he’s not in the peak of health, but he’s done more to help eastern Europe integrate with the west than pretty much any other post-Cold War European politician – primarily through his efforts to scrap the Warsaw Pact, but also through the continuing power of Charter 77 to inspire drives for positive change.

The symbolic value of having an eastern European (well, central European, but you know what I mean) as the first permanent president of the EU could be ideal as Europe continues to try to get over the divisions of the 20th century – and ending such divides was, the primary motivation for starting the European project in the first place.

Plus, Havel has much experience of battling against a clunky bureaucratic system, a strong track record in bringing about meaningful reform, and the kind of personal understanding of the promise of the EU that many in western Europe seem to be forgetting. With his playwright’s mastery of words and strong international reputation, he could be both the kind of politician non-EU heads of state would be pleased to deal with, and exactly the kind of convincing, passionate spokesman the European Union has desperately needed for so long to keep its people focussed on what the EU is really all about.

Plus, of course, as anyone who has ever seen any of his plays or read any interviews with him can attest, he is also a philosopher of unusual subtlety and humanism – and, most importantly as far as I’m concerned, entered politics only reluctantly. Who better than a philosopher king to lead Europe?

Seriously, have a quick gander at the page devoted to Havel on WikiQuote, and tell me this isn’t the sort of person we should have running things. Even just read this one short extract from his 1 January 1990 address to the nation, and tell me this isn’t what the EU should be:

You may ask what kind of republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic that serves the individual and that therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn

Or this, from a 1994 speech that seems to have more relevance now than ever:

Our civilization has essentially globalized only the surfaces of our lives. But our inner self continues to have a life of its own. And the fewer answers the era of rational knowledge provides to the basic questions of human Being, the more deeply it would seem that people, behind its back as it were, cling to the ancient certainties of their tribe…

It is clearly necessary to invent organizational structures appropriate to the present multicultural age. But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not grow out of something deeper, out of generally held values.

I am referring to respect for the unique human being and his or her liberties and inalienable rights and to the principle that all power derives from the people.

This is the kind of guy the EU needs.

Looks like Dave’s finally making vague moves to lay out his approach to the EU in somewhat more clear terms than “we don’t like the EU much, but we won’t tell you quite how much” and “We’ll quit the biggest centre-right group in the European Parliament – in the face of opposition from almost all the Tory MEPs due to the inevitable loss of influence that will bring – but we won’t tell you when, exactly”.

But has he actually clarified anything, or just taken a line out of Sarkozy’s book and learned how to say nothing much at all while rattling on for quite a while? Hard to say, sadly…

In any case, this week’s EU week in Toryland.

Today we get Camoron (I’ll leave that in as a Freudian typing slip) telling Blair to “come clean” on the EU, by which he seems to mean “destroy Britain’s diplomatic bargaining position by outright rejecting any sort of constitution in any shape or form”.

This follows his article earlier in the week, co-written with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, “Building an EU that we can all be proud of“, and his speech in Brussels, which purportedly set out the Cameron Tories’ approach to the EU. (That approach being “cautiously, because we don’t really understand it”, from initial glances…)

Elaib at England Expects has fisked Camon’s speech fairly nicely (albeit from a rather different ideological standpoint from mine), but still, let’s not be unfair. Sooner or later the Tories are going to come up with a workable and sensible EU policy – why not now?

On the surface – as so often seems to be the case with Cameron – all seems well, with much of the rhetoric being stuff I can fully support: First from the article:

“Fifty years after the Treaty of Rome, we have a new Europe, facing new challenges and with a new generation of leaders. But we have the same EU, still too attached to the tenets of centralisation and regulation and still too interested in itself, rather than worldwide challenges… A new, positive agenda for Europe means reconnecting it to these urgent priorities. It means moving towards a new flexibility and dynamism.”

Then from the speech:

“People in Europe have an ever-increasing feeling that something is going wrong, that an untransparent, complex, intricate, mammoth institution has evolved… grabbing ever greater competences and areas of power; that the democratic control mechanisms are failing: in brief, that it cannot go on like this”

So, nothing radical there, but acknowledging the need for serious reform. Good stuff. But what sort of reform, exactly? Cameron again relies heavily on his “3G Europe” buzzwords “globalisation, global warming and global poverty”, but it’s unclear precisely what his solutions to any of these are – or indeed whether at least one of them even exists. Is the “green Tory” thing he seems so keen on really so much of a potential vote winner that he’s going to apply it to the EU as well? I can’t see it myself, and here it seems little more than a distraction from the key issues.

Still, back to what he actually says. He says his plan is to “work to create a flexible Europe by building alliances with those who share our interests and our ideas”. Which means precisely nothing.

What is Cameron’s vision of “a flexible Europe”? Sounds good, certainly, but does this mean a “multi-tier” Europe, a “two-speed” Europe, a “core” Europe or something else as yet unproposed? As Nanne at DJ Nozem explained at the weekend, there’s all sorts of different options, and nothing that anyone’s worked out sufficiently for it to be plausible to implement.

Nonetheless, journalist and Tory MEP Daniel Hannan was surprisingly impressed with this passage from Cameron’s speech in particular:

Just as member states have in the past agreed to transfer competences to the EU, so it should be possible to move in the opposite direction. How can we enshrine the principle that powers can be returned to member states — not as a vague aspiration, but as a central element of the legal architecture of the Union? What are the tasks that we can return to national or local governments?

Reading between the lines, this does indeed seem to be suggesting a multi-tier Europe, where the UK (for example) can pull back a bit while more enthusiastic member states can press on. It’s certainly not clear, however – and does, as Hannan points out, go against the founding Treaty of Rome’s specific commitment to “an ever-closer union”.

Hannan, it would seem, is quite happy with his leader’s new approach:

David Cameron is not simply drawing up a wish-list. He is proposing a structural overhaul, so that powers could, in future, pass up and down between Brussels and the national capitals as the states decide…

The core, Carolingian nations would doubtless want to continue with their palaeo-federalism: a European Army, a European police force, a European president, a European constitution. But the trading, maritime peoples on Europe’s periphery might begin to loose their bonds: to remain in a free trade area, but withdraw from the accompanying political structures. They might, indeed, link up with the EFTA countries, which already have such a deal and which, largely in consequence, enjoy the highest GDP per capita in Europe…

David Cameron spoke with the air of a man who had given his words considerable thought. The text itself bore the tell-tale spoor of reworking by several hands. And, most important, the words came accompanied by action: an international commission on the repatriation of power, and a new group in the European Parliament to act as its delivery vehicle.”

It is this international commission – the Movement for European Reform which will decide if this new drive succeeds or fails – because it looks like it is the commission which will come up with the actual policies and proposals (which, as so often with Cameron, don’t yet appear to have been formulated…)

Cameron, to be fair to him, has identified the majority of the EU’s biggest problems. If Hannan’s reading of the new Tory approach is correct, Cameron is also pushing towards a version of the multi-tier Europe that I personally favour as a (very complex and potentially disastrous, admittedly) solution to the current EU deadlock. The fact that he makes noises supporting future Turkish, Ukrainian and former Yugoslavian applications for membership is likewise welcome. Whether his odd initial alliance with the Czechs will last, let alone expand into a genuinely continent-wide reform movement, is unclear. But he seems to be full of good intentions – and shush about that “road to hell” business…

But will the Cameron-backed Movement for European Reform be able to come up with any concrete, workable proposals – or is this yet another, albeit slightly fancier-looking stage in the ongoing Tory approach to the EU – never do today what can be put off until, preferably, you’re no longer in a position to have to make a decision on it. Is Cameron serious with this attempt to build a consensus on radical reform for the EU – which should only be welcomed – or is he simply prevaricating once again? Unfortunately, it seems we’ve also got little choice but – to borrow a phrase from John Major that seems strangely appropriate once again – to wait and see…

Stranger things have happened than the Conservative party shaking off its internal divisions over the EU and coming up with workable alternatives. I can’t think of any off the top of my head, it must be said, but still…

Update: More takes I’d missed:

1) Pro-EU Jon Worth (Critical)
2) Anti-EU Chris (Critical)
3) Comparatively unbiased Transatlantic Assembly (Critical)

You can’t please all of the people all of the time, it’d seem. Cameron appears not to have pleased many people at all… I’ll continue to withhold judgement until I can tell what, if anything, it is he’s intending.