Final Word from Wednesday, August 8, 2018
The main reason Bohuslav Sobotka lost the migration debate, despite his rejection of mandatory quotas, was that voters didn't trust him to follow through and to stand up to Angela Merkel. His outward opposition to a Brussels-imposed solution was seen as an election pose. The current Brussels-friendly approach of Sobotka's fellow traveler Miroslav Poche seems to confirm this. The objective remains to keep Brussels from looking more closely at ČSSD a.s. With Sobotka out of the picture, it is now Andrej Babiš who is publicly taking on Merkel. He went out of his way to tell Právo that he didn't speak with her at Bayreuth about politics, because she knows he has a different view on migration. This is the same Babiš who was trying so hard to fit into Europe, presumably because of Agrofert a.s.'s vast German assets. The No. 1 Czech foreign-policy question, even if hardly anyone is asking it, is why Andrej Babiš is suddenly so willing to go head-to-head with Angela Merkel. [Czech Republic refugees]
Glossary of difficult words
to follow something through - to continue an action or task to its conclusion;
to stand up to - to oppose; to make a spirited defense against;
pose - a particular way of behaving in order to impress or to give a false impression;
to be out of the picture - no longer to be involved in a situation;
vast - immense; of very great extent or quantity;
head-to-head - involving two parties confronting each other.