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Over the past year, Czech diplomacy on foreign soil has undergone a noticeable change. What began with the consecration of the previous government of Andrej Babiš (ANO) and former President Miloš Zeman ended. Vacancies were predominantly filled by career diplomats. Petr Fiala’s (ODS) cabinet announced this trend from the start. And as the Foreign Minister confirmed to Aktuálně.cz at the end of the year, he will not resign from this.
The former diplomat of the 1990s and the first years after 2000, former Defense Minister and also ex-Foreign Minister Martin Stropnický (ANO), already knew last spring that he would end his service in the department of the current head of Czech diplomacy. Jan Lipavský (Pirates). His mandate as ambassador to Israel was slowly coming to an end, but he looked for other opportunities.
As the editorial team previously emphasized, he was interested in the post of consul general in Milan. He has a strong relationship with Italy, years ago he was ambassador to Rome. He also headed the embassy in the Vatican. However, the Foreign Ministry chose another person for the post in Milan. Stropnický’s employment contract with the Černín Palace expired last July.
Stropnicki’s Israeli mission was approved by Andrej Babiš’s government, in which he himself was a minister. The nomination was signed by former President Miloš Zeman. The former ANO politician is the most striking example that current diplomacy no longer has the intention of working with political candidates from the Zemanov-Babišov era.
Tuhý and Slamečka were eliminated at the last moment
“The vast majority of newly appointed ambassadors are long-term diplomats and there are a minimum of nominations that have a political color,” Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský told Aktuálně.cz. The embassy in Israel was taken over by Veronika Kuchyňová Šmigolová, who had previously headed important departments in the Foreign Ministry for years and served as ambassador.
In two cases, the Lipavského spa intervened much more harshly than the Stropnický spa. The outgoing ambassador to Slovakia and former police chief Tomáš Tuhý was already preparing for a new assignment in Slovenia, while Gustav Slamečka was supposed to take over the embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark. Both already had the approval of the host countries, but in the end they went nowhere.
“Our government was able to fulfill the sentence from the program statement that we will professionalize diplomacy,” says Lipavský. His department did not renew the contracts of either appointee. The new ambassador to Slovenia is Jiří Kuděla, a long-time diplomat, and Jiří Ellinger, who has more than twenty years of experience in diplomacy, is the new ambassador to Denmark.
Vladimír Tomšík’s mission to China was also fulfilled last year. Former President Zeman was involved in the engagement of the former deputy governor of the Czech National Bank at the embassy in Beijing. But as soon as Tomšík’s mandate ended, the Černín Palace allowed his employment contract to expire last September. The economist returned to the CNB as an advisor.
Sometimes political nominations don’t matter
“We will return professionalism to diplomacy, we will modernize the functioning of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and make it more efficient,” is the literal sentence from the program statement of the Fial Cabinet, which Minister Lipavský referred to and which characterizes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic described changes in the surroundings of the Černín Palace.
He describes efforts to transform the ambassadorial corps by comparing it to the most famous gymnast of the 20th century, Věra Čáslavská. Lipavský wants diplomats who have a spark of courage. “So that they train hard, have talent, but are humble and generous. So that they are not afraid to go to Japan or Mexico, shine there and set world records, and that when they meet the Russians they defy them,” he said.
Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský. | Photo: Jakub Plíhal
However, his department does not always turn to people who have already earned their diplomatic spurs. The new ambassador to Poland, for example, is the former vice-rector of Masaryk University Břetislav Dančák. The minister explains his job by saying that Dančák has an intense bond with our northern neighbor. For five years he was chairman of the Czech-Polish Forum at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Since October, former long-term soldier Aleš Opata, who most recently commanded the domestic army as chief of general staff, has headed the embassy in Lithuania. Lipavský also made an exception for him. “His previous experience can be useful in a particular country at this particular time,” he said, alluding to Lithuania’s proximity to aggressive Russia, which started the war in Ukraine.
However, some remained
Some interventions in the Černín Castle attracted critical attention. This is especially true for the discontinued Tuhé and Slamečka, who were given a stop sign at the last minute. “Let’s face it, it’s very unusual. For the receiving state it means that the sending state does not know what it wants or that there are disputes,” said former Foreign Minister Tomáš Petříček (Socdem) to the editorial team.
In addition, the resort town of Lipavského has not always survived isolation efforts since the Zemanov-Babišov era. Since last January, the embassy in Rome has been headed by Jan Kohout, who served twice as foreign minister in the interim government. The second was Jiří Rusnok’s cabinet, to which nominations were distributed at Miloš Zeman’s request. Kohout founded the New Silk Road Institute near China years ago.
Adam Vojtěch (ANO), who served twice as health minister in Babiš’s government, finally traveled to Finland as ambassador in February last year. In the event that Kohout and Vojtěch became embassy heads, Fial’s cabinet was already in place, but Zeman was still president. And according to information from Aktuálně.cz, the engagement of both men was the last consolation of the Černín Palace for the outgoing president.
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