The Czech Republic’s presidency in the EU Council in the second half of 2022 is generally considered successful by both experts and the general public. Moreover, selected high-ranking EU officials praised how well the Czech Republic guided the other 26 member states through the multicrisis period of the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, and rising inflation. Its commendable reception sharply contrasts with the somewhat controversial perception of the Czech Republic’s first presidency of the European Union in 2009. A unique exploratory study seeks to find relevant factors that led the directly involved Czech representatives in Brussels to a performance that contributed to the positively perceived results of the presidency. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with Czech diplomats then working at the Permanent Representation of the Czech Republic in Brussels and actively participating in diplomatic negotiations, the authors aim to identify motivations, reasons, and causes whose combination may have significantly contributed to the success of the Czech Republic. Their goal is thus, among other things, to find out to what extent it may have been motivated by a desire to repair the reputation of the previous presidency. The paper provides a widely sought insight into the functioning of the institutional structure of the supranational organization and the thinking of people involved in this operation. It also covers the period when the European Union faced the onslaught of a multicrisis, to which representatives of the presiding state had to respond in the shortest possible time frame. The text inadvertently analyses the reflections of diplomats involved in time-consuming negotiations and solving several crises at once.
