On 9 and 10 December, 2010 Chairman, Bence Bauer and Vice-chair responsible for external representation and membership, Juraj Antal joined the EPP’s delegation to Prague. The purpose of this visit was that working group number 3, dealing with membership, would find out more facts to TOP 09’s application to join EPP.
TOP 09 is the second largest party in government, party founded by popular politician and currently Minister of Foreign Affairs, Karel Schwarzenberg. It enjoyed a success in the May general elections making it the third strongest party in the parliament and together with ODS, and Věci Veřejné (Public Affairs) formed the government.
The head of the delegation, Corien Wortmann – Kool, international secretaries of EPP member parties, MEP Zuzana Roithova from the Czech Christian Democrats, Representative of the EPP’s fraction in the Council of Europe and the EDS delegation opened with a working lunch with minister Schwarzenberg. Following that, the delegation met some of the TOP 09 MPs, local branch chairmen, Prague city council deputies and the chairman of the Mayors in the lower house of the Czech parliament. “The alliance with mayors is a strong bond and key factor to the popularity of TOP 09 in the Czech Republic”, said Petr Gazdik, Head of TOP 09’s parliamentary club and the Chairman of the Mayor movement. This movement signed a strategic alliance with TOP 09, where independent mayors of municipalities brought their expertise into the party and gave it more credibility, on which they worked all campaign.
The afternoon then continued with a meeting in the party’s headquarters. There the campaign strategies were explained and one important fact was mentioned. The person of Mr. Schwarzenberg and the alliance with the Mayors moved a new wave of young people to activism, in other words, mobilized unprecedented masses of youth to help the party in the campaign. Later that night a meeting followed with Jan Michal, head of the European Commission’s representation to the Czech Republic. The EPP delegation met with for a working dinner with the sole Czech EPP member, the Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL. There discussion continued on topics in Czech politics, TOP 09’s membership application and related issues.
Friday morning, 10 December, was dedicated to meeting the representatives of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Hanns Seidel Foundation. NGOs, which focus on political analysis, were a useful help for exchanging thoughts about the current Czech political scene, its electorate, the population’s attitude towards EU and towards TOP 09. The atmosphere of the meetings had a friendly and constructive nature. In the end Corien Wortmann-Kool thanked the delegates for participating, thanked the organizers and hosts for their hospitality and help. EDS would like to express their gratitude to EPP for allowing EDS to participate in such important events as fact finding missions to find out more about candidate parties. We look forward to cooperating with another fact finding mission, should need arise in the future.
EDS is a member association of