Obama nominates White House “ethics Czar” Eisen as ambassador to Czech Republic

US President Barack Obama has nominated Norman Eisen, a lawyer and the president’s advisor on ethics, as the new ambassador to the Czech Republic. The Czech Foreign Ministry approved the nomination on Wednesday, but Mr Eisen’s nomination is yet to be confirmed by the US Senate. Radio Prague spoke to Daniel Anýž, a commentator for a leading Czech daily, Hospodářské noviny, about the likely new US envoy to Prague.

Norman Eisen, photo: http://undertheinfluence.nationaljournal.com

“He has an interesting personal background. He was born in Los Angeles in 1960 to a family of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father, who escaped the Holocaust, comes from Poland, and his mother is from the former Czechoslovakia. I don’t from where exactly both of them have roots here in eastern Europe.

“Norman Eisen himself has had an interesting career – a lawyer for a prominent DC firm who at the same time founded an NGO in Washington, a government watchdog called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. And from there, he went to the White House.”

The US embassy in Prague has not had an ambassador for 18 months, ever since George W. Bush’s appointee, Richard Graber, left in January 2009. Why did the nomination take so long?

“The whole issue was very unfortunate. The Czechs blamed the US administration for hesitating about who to send, but that was not the case. There was a nominee, Mark Nathanson, a wealthy businessman who made his fortune in TV and media business; he is one of the wealthiest people in the US. But going through this really tough screening during the process – nominees have to be approved by the US Senate – he basically gave up. He said, ‘that’s enough for me and I don’t want anybody to dig so deep in my accounts’.”

Temelín nuclear power plant

The state-owned the Czech energy giant ČEZ is going to come up with a multi-billion tender, the biggest in Czech history, for the completion of the Temelín nuclear power plant. One of the competitors for the contract will be the US company Westinghouse. Do you think this will be the primary focus of the new ambassador?

“Probably. The Temelín tender is really a big thing, it’s one the biggest recent nuclear tenders in the world. All the three companies – Russia’s Atomstroyexport, the French firm Areva and American Westinghouse – will have strong backing by their governments because this is not only about one deal, but rather about the presence of the company and its country in the Czech Republic for the next hundred years.”