A careerist whose ambition clouds his judgement.



Driving ambition the key to success: Pavel Telicka (on left) and his new car. By Christmas, he hopes to exchange his Audi A5 for an Audi A8 –from the European Commission’s car pool.

“If you see a wave coming, it would be foolish to try to stop it by building a breakwater. Instead, you should learn how to surf and ride the wave.” So says Pavel Telicka, the self-styled pragmatist who leads the candidate list of ANO 2011 in next month’s European parliamentary elections.

An opportunist will always hide behind a defence of pragmatism, sacrificing judgement on the altar of ambition. Pavel Telicka learnt to surf early on in life. He graduated in law from Charles University in 1986, joining the Communist party and the Czechoslovak foreign service soon after. “It was a mistake”, he admitted at his hearing before the European parliament to become a European commissioner in 2004.

It was the classic careerist mistake. Telicka was so eager to surf the Communist wave that he failed to see the wave behind it, joining the party shortly before it was washed away in 1989. Twenty five years on, he is more cautious. He joined ANO 2011 just eight weeks before parliamentary elections in October 2013, by which time it was clear that Andrej Babis would wipe out not only ODS but the Zemanites as well, with whom Telicka had been flirting.

Bakala? Bakala who?

There are other examples in Telicka’s career which illustrate how he has let ambition impair his judgement. This weekend, Telicka announced that he shall give up his paid position as a non-executive director in Zdenek Bakala’s NWR, a post he has held for the last four years. Three days ago, Telicka’s political patron, Andrej Babis, launched a public attack on the proposal of the industry minister to bail out Bakala with a billion crowns of public money, a proposal produced by a government commission on which Telicka sits. Telicka, in other words, is about to drop Bakala to appease his political boss, who he needs if he is to secure election to the European parliament and more importantly, a second term as European Commissioner. The current Commission’s term of office ends in six months’ time.

Anyone with such lofty ambitions should never have joined Bakala’s NWR team in the first place, given the firm’s reputation as a corporate raider. For the last eight years, Telicka has served as European coordinator of the Rail Baltica project, an EU funded initiative pushing for a rail transport corridor from the Baltics to Central Europe. Telicka's pivotal role in the project is one reason why he was hired by Bakala, whose commercial interests include rail freight in Belorussia and Poland.

Conflict? What conflict?

By far the best illustration of how Telicka’s ambition clouds his judgement is his role as Mr Europe in ANO 2011. Telicka (and his business partner Petr Jezek) are to become Andrej Babis’s principal interface with Brussels. One of their more important tasks will be to promote the efficient exploitation of EU funding.

Here is Telicka in January 2014: “Czech politicians do not consider how properly to target policy towards the use of EU funds, they only know how to fill their party’s coffers and their own pockets.” I agree. And so does the German Christian Democrat, Ingeborg Grässle, who sits on the European Parliament’s budgetary control committee. She came to Prague last month to examine the country’s auditing of EU funds. She was not happy with what she found.

The Czech system of drawing EU funds facilitates massive fraud and abuse, she said. But she also said that companies owned by Andrej Babis had received 2.6 million euros in EU grants; that in his role as finance minister, Babis oversees the distribution of these funds; and that this combination of interests represents a glaring conflict, casting doubt on the integrity of the Czech Republic's system for auditing the use of EU money.

Babis told the German MEP to get stuffed, and hid behind a formal legal defence (Czech law allows him to own, but not to run, Agrofert). Telicka, ever the careerist, did not leap to his political patron's defence. At home, Babis can easily dismiss the charge that he is conflicted because a quarter of Czech voters believe that he will manage his conflict in good faith. But the problem cannot be so easily dealt with in Brussels, and it will be Telicka who will have to deal with it if elected next month.

Babis? Babis who?

Czech national interests are not identical with the interests of Agrofert Holding. In Brussels, Telicka will face a wave of European suspicion that his political patron is part of the problem, not part of the solution to the problem of Czech abuse of EU funding. Will he be foolish enough (in his own words) to try to stop this wave by building a breakwater, or will he ride it instead?

For an opportunist who puts his own career first, the answer is clear. Telicka will ride it. He will equivocate on the matter of European objections to the Czech finance minister's conflict of interests for just long enough to get himself appointed as European commissioner, for which he needs Andrej Babis. And as a commissioner, he must represent the interests of all European citizens and can safely admit that membership of ANO 2011, like membership in the Communist party, was perhaps a mistake.

This is the trouble with opportunists: they use others to get ahead and drop them the moment the relationship is no longer fit for purpose. The Communist party was a 'mistake'; Zdenek Bakala is now a 'mistake'; and by Christmas, when Telicka exchanges his A5 for Stefan Füle’s A8 from the European Commission car pool, Andrej Babis will become another of Telicka's 'mistakes'.

Perhaps Telicka’s flexible character makes him an ideal senior European government executive. But do we really want such an empty vessel (and such a crashing bore) representing Europe? Telicka told a group of students at the London School of Economics a few weeks ago that Europe's government needs inspiring leaders today. I agree. Leaders who create waves rather than just ride them. This is why I shall not be giving Pavel Telicka my vote on May 23.