AMO Research Fellows marks foreign policy of the Czech Republic in 2015 with C+ and give particular policy recommendations for 2016.

“The President can once again be considered the main problem of Czech foreign policy. Zeman attended the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow and was the sole head of state of an EU Member State present at the military revue commemorating the end of the Second World War in Beijing. In both cases, after meeting with Vladimir Putin, he promoted lifting the sanctions against the Russian Federation, regardless of the fact that conditions for doing so had not been met. The President also found a new issue in the refugee crisis. His statements, however, were devoid of the slightest shred of humanity,” editor Vít Dostál writes in the opening chapter.

“The Czech Republic has been unable to come to terms with the negative trends that have become evident in recent years. Certain declared strategic relations – such as the relationship with Washington and Warsaw – yielded no meaningful results over the past year. Elsewhere, the Czech Republic attempted to develop strategic relations without really discussing what it wanted to achieve. The expectations with regard to deepening relations with Austria or China are unclear, and the new strategic partnership with autocratic Azerbaijan is difficult to comprehend,” he adds.

Agenda for Czech Foreign Policy is the annual publication on foreign policy of the Czech Republic and its priority areas which has been published by the AMO Research Center since 2007.

The publication was supported by the Prague office of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation and by the Czech Development Agency and Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the Programme of the Foreign Development Cooperation of the Czech Republic.