EU leader condemns US ‘road to hell’
Financial Times
By Tony Barber in
March 25 2009
European Union hopes for a new era in relations with the
Barely a week
before Barack Obama is due to arrive in Europe on his
first official visit as US president, Mirek Topolanek, the Czech
Republic’s prime minister, put the 27-nation EU on a collision course with
Washington.
His attack compounded the confusion that
has engulfed EU policy after the Czech leader lost a no-confidence vote in the
country’s parliament on Tuesday, forcing him to offer his government’s resignation
midway through its six-month EU presidency.
Mr Topolanek said EU leaders had been disturbed at a summit in
“The US Treasury secretary talks about
permanent action and we, at our spring council, were quite alarmed at that . .
. The US is repeating mistakes from the 1930s, such as wide-ranging stimuluses, protectionist tendencies and appeals, the Buy
American campaign, and so on,” he told a European parliament session in
Strasbourg. “All these steps, their combination and their permanency, are the
road to hell.”
US officials made
no comment on the remarks. But the Obama administration says it took great
pains to ensure that the Buy American provisions in the $787bn (€579bn)
stimulus that the president signed into law last month were consistent with
World Trade Organisation rules. It followed,
therefore, that any attempt to make them permanent would continue to be consistent
with WTO rules.
EU diplomats said
it was the most extraordinary outburst from a political leader in charge of
running the EU’s affairs since
Other leaders of EU member states,
including Angela Merkel,
The Czech leader
was speaking eight days before Mr Obama was due to arrive in
After the summit
and a Nato meeting in
Relations between
the Obama administration and Mr Topolanek’s
government have been delicate in recent weeks because of signals from
Mr Obama has vigorously opposed the view that the Great Depression was caused
by too much spending, rather than too
little, a view held by a small handful of rightwing economists.