Merkel in Prague

Following her election as German chancellor on Nov. 22, 2005, it took Angela Merkel a mere 10 days to visit Poland. When she comes to Prague on Friday, she will have been Germany's head of government for 430 days.

While some might rush to interpret this as a sign of indifference towards Germany's other eastern neighbor, Merkel herself has made it quite clear that she has a soft spot for the "Golden City."

"I almost have a bit of a yearning for Prague," Merkel, who spent many months as a guest physicist at Prague's Charles University, said during a meeting with then Czech Premier Jiri Paroubek in Berlin shortly after she became chancellor.

"I did get the impression that she has a more personal and emotional relationship with Prague than with other European capitals," said Stefan Gehrold, the head of the Prague office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is associated with Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. "She probably would have come earlier if the political situation had been different."

More than seven months after elections and the resulting political stalemate between the left and the right as both camps had an equal amount of seats, a new government led by conservative Premier Mirek Topolanek and backed by the Greens only received parliamentary approval a week ago.

"Before that, we were still in the middle of a virtual election campaign," Gehrold said, adding that a visit by the head of Germany's conservatives might have been misconstrued as campaign support.

Now that the question of government has been settled, Merkel will be able to meet her Czech counterpart and have dinner with President Vaclav Klaus during her three-hour visit. The main topic of the talks will be the goals of Germany's current EU presidency.

European disagreements

Those goals include reviving the adoption of the EU constitution -- an issue that's bound to trigger heated discussion between Merkel and her Czech conversation partners, according to some in Prague.

"I see a problem concerning EU policy," said Zuzana Kleknerova, a journalist with online newspaper Aktualne.cz, adding that the largest government party ODS has clear euroskeptic tendencies and criticizes the constitution.

"The constitution is something that Frau Merkel considers to be very important and that's an issue she and our prime minister don't agree on," Kleknerova said, adding that the two countries were doing great as far as bilateral issues were concerned.

That includes the ongoing dispute over the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from their homes in Czechoslovakia following World War II.

"It's a chapter that's been closed," she said, adding that reparation claims by Sudeten Germans had been rejected by the courts and had not received the backing of either Merkel or her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder.

Robust relationship

The two countries also just celebrated the 10th anniversary of the signing of the so-called German-Czech Declaration on Mutual Relations and their Future Development on Jan. 21, 1997. The document obliges both sides to advance relations while setting aside any political and legal issues stemming from the past, particularly the years of Nazi occupation and the expulsion of Sudeten Germans.

"People have learned to deal with these things and the controversies based in history are fading," said Kai-Olaf Lang, an expert on Czech foreign policy with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. He added that Germany's new-found self-confidence did not cause as much alarm in the Czech Republic as it currently does in Poland, for example.

"The German-Czech relationship has become a robust one," he said.