Czech Prime Minister’s “road to hell” comments on US land him in hot water

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has made trans-Atlantic headlines for his outspoken attack on US measures to tackle the economic crisis by describing them as “a road to hell.” The blunt criticism of President Barack Obama’s central economic policies were splashed across US newspapers and became the hot topic for talk shows with many asking where the Czech Prime Minister was coming from.

Mirek Topolánek, photo: CTK

Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek made his “road to hell” comments in the full media glare of a European Parliament session in Strasbourg on Wednesday with reporters from around the world waiting to pick up his words.

Mr Topolánek said the US is repeating the mistakes of the 1930’s with big cash injections into the economy and a drift towards protectionism and added that it has not learnt the lessons of the Great Depression.

The timing appears awkward at best. The US and Britain are pushing for a bigger effort for a coordinated kick start to the global economy from the world’s economic big hitters, including the EU.

That issue should be high on the agenda at the G20 meeting of the world’s most developed economies in London next week. Mr Topolánek will have a seat there as head of the EU’s rotating presidency.

The comments also came just 10 days before President Obama is due to touch down in Prague for a visit which promises to be the highlight of the Czech six month EU presidency.

Nicolas Véron, a research fellow at the Brussels-based EU think tank, Breugel, says Prime Minister Topolánek’s views should be taken as a highly personal outburst:

“Just saying it is a road to hell, I think, goes well beyond the consensus view. I would say it is a very judgemental position of what is happening in the US and I do not think it reflects a very broad based analysis.”

Barack Obama, photo: CTK

What is more, he says, the Czech Prime Minister has put himself out on a limb compared with official EU policy. “I am not aware that the EU has at any moment said that the US should not do the stimulus they are doing. So I do not think there is an analysis at EU level that the US policy is misguided and that is what the Czech Prime Minister said. So in that sense, I do not think he reflects an EU consensus.”

And Mr Véron also questions whether the right-wing Czech Prime Minister’s reading of the history of the Great Depression in the 1930’s is on the mark. “There were sundry policy mistakes that led to the Great Depression. But the biggest policy mistakes were not done by the New Deal and Roosevelt administration but before. That is at least what most economists and economic historians think about it. So I really do not think that this assessment given by Prime Minister Topolánek can be considered as broad based and reflecting any sort of scientific or historical consensus here.”

Those taking a charitable view say the comments could just be another example of a media blunder. But the Czech Prime Minister has insisted his statement was a timely defence of EU anti-crisis steps so far.