Prime minister has tough time choosing Czech EU commissioner
There are just over two weeks to go before Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla has to send a letter to European Commission President Romano Prodi saying who should become the Czech Republic's first EU Commissioner. However the prime minister has his work cut out for him, due to the complex set of criteria involved.
First of all you need to be fluent in either English, French or German, and it's that linguistic criterion which is making Mr Spidla's job rather difficult. The prime minister has complained that there are plenty of suitable candidates, the problem is not all of them are very good at languages. A second problem is that the Czechs want their candidate to have ministerial experience. And third, for political reasons, the he or she really has to be someone nominated by Mr Spidla's own Social Democrats, the biggest party in the ruling coalition. So the list is a rather short one.
Right, so who's on it?
Unfortunately the list is known only to members of the cabinet, all we can do is speculate. For a start I can tell you a few of the better known names which seem to have been crossed off it. They include Mr Spidla's predecessor Milos Zeman, former Finance Minister Pavel Mertlik, and Jiri Dienstbier, who was a UN envoy for human rights in the former Yugoslavia.
So who's left?
A handful of people few listeners will be very familiar with I'm afraid. According to the online version of Pravo newspaper, which is closest to the Social Democrats, Mr Spidla has narrowed the choice down to two: Pavel Telicka, the man who led the negotiations for the country's EU membership, now Czech Ambassador to the EU, and a former minister called Kvetoslava Korinkova.
And what are their chances?
Well both have serious drawbacks. Pavel Telicka is a skilled diplomat and an excellent linguist, but he's still just a civil servant: he has no experience as a minister and doesn't belong to a political party. Mrs Korinkova, on the other hand, has the ministerial experience and is also a member of the Social Democrats, but it seems she would be unacceptable to at least one of the smaller parties in the ruling coalition.
So if neither of those two make it, does Mr Spidla have anyone else up his sleeve?
A third candidate is Petr Lachnit - he's a Social Democrat, he's a former minister, and his English is said to be quite good. The problem is he's also one of the prime minister's strongest opponents within the party. On the other hand, some observers have suggested it might be a good way of getting rid of him - by sending him to Brussels.
