She was born in Ostrava, graduated from high school in Jihlava, and pursued a university education in Prague. However, during her studies, love took Eva Decroix all the way to France. It was there that she got her law degree, then went on to spend a couple of months living and working in London, and after that, moved back to Czechia with her husband. In the latest parliamentary election, she was elected an MP.
You got your law degree in France, lived in London, and then came back to the Czech republic. That’s not exactly commonplace. Why did you decide to live here, and convinced your French husband to do the same?
I don’t think it’s terribly uncommon. Many of my peers traveled the world, only to then come back home to start a family. That was my case as well. What was different for me, though, was that out of the two of us, it was my husband who was really looking forward to coming to Czechia. We met in Prague and left for France together. Before he met me, he used to travel a lot all over the world, and always considered Czechia to be the most beautiful little corner of it. Whereas I needed some time abroad to arrive at that same conclusion. I never regretted coming back home, though, and now I can’t imagine living anywhere else but the Vysočina region. I think it’s fairly normal that the older we get, the more the places where we grew up get under our skin, until we love them above all else. That’s Vysočina in my case. It must be fate, then, that my husband, who used to only love Prague, fell under this region’s spell as well. Our home in the heart of the forest under Javořice changed our lives, and we’ve put down roots. The two of us and our family.
You live in the Vysočina region, in a village called Horní Dubenky, which has less than six hundred inhabitants, and you run a renowned French restaurant. What are the pros and cons of village life, so far away from civilization?
When you fall in love with a certain place, you don’t really stop to consider the pros and cons, it simply becomes a part of you. It’s in the details. Details which shape us and our family. The memory of our children dashing outside to harvest peas. Counting the wild geese on the pond outside our window, while the fireplace happily crackles away close by. My God-given right to go out into the forest at any given point in time, where I shall meet no one but the occasional deer, where I know every single tree and pathway, and where I can feel truly, purely happy. Generally speaking, our life in Vysočina returned to us a slower pace of living, as well as a peace and quiet. It’s also a place we can all of us always come back to. It sounds pathetic, but we really do feel that way. Opening a restaurant on the ground floor of our house was a sort of culmination of our need to be in and share the place we love and enjoy, as well as this kind of innate French sense of hospitality. There isn’t really any sort of a solid business plan behind this restaurant project of ours, to this day we measure its success in simply feeling good there, and other people perceiving and sharing that feeling. The people here, our neighbors, are fantastic, and they’ve accepted us without hesitation. We never felt any sort of animosity towards strangers, foreigners, or newcomers from Prague. We’re always delighted to welcome the locals for dinner or ice cream. We realize it’s not an automatic thing, and that living in this region isn’t always easy. But the people here are fair and just, and I believe my husband made a lasting impression with how hard-working he is. As I said – Vysočina is simply the best!
It took several unsuccessful candidacy attempts to finally make it into the Chamber of Deputies. What made you stick it out and never give up?
I entered politics after I’d already established a law firm in Jihlava, and I felt that if one is to do business in a certain city, he or she should take interest in its public services. My ambitions didn’t yet extend to an active political life at that time. I had two small kids, and it took a lot of effort there at the beginning to even make ends meet. I mostly existed in a supporting role, a non-elective position on our local municipal ticket in Jihlava, where I spent most of my time. You don’t really aim to get in a good spot yourself in a position like that, it’s more to support the people on that election ticket who actually matter and do most of the work. What I personally consider to be my very first step towards becoming more active in politics, was my decision in the latest European Parliament election. I really felt the need to let the world know that the European Union isn’t just the big bad wolf many considered it to be – it also presents an opportunity. For me, it was about expressing those values that we considered western European-leaning. In hindsight, I admit that in my effort to support that European spirit, I might have come across as naive. I do believe that the following developments confirmed my convictions, though. You can’t just shuffle your feet in the middle and do nothing, you simply have to become an active participant, even perhaps a critic sometimes. From my point of view, the entire campaign, even though it did not end up securing me a seat in the European Parliament itself, was a very successful one. I toughened up, grew up, politically speaking. I learned what it meant to really do politics. And more importantly, what it costs to put yourself out there, go out on a limb, and let others see you just the way you are. The experience hardened me. There was no going back anymore. I became homo politicus. I don’t consider my political journey to be one of many failed candidacies, but rather an evolution of sorts, one that taught and formed me along the way.
You’re a member of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee. Do you agree with the verdict that thanks to our country’s presidency of the EU, we ceased to be a satellite state to Orbán’s Hungary? And if so, where do you see Czechia within the Union, and who are its allies?
Hungary, as it is today, has me, not to put too fine a point on it, very worried. My job gives me access to information that clearly connects the country to Putin’s Russia. The current cooldown of our relationship with Hungary isn’t a result of our presidency, but rather a result of developments within Hungary itself. Some very unfortunate developments. On the contrary, we see many of our neighboring countries avidly sharing our views on foreign policy. Foreign policy is a very dynamic field, and when one door closes, we must search for others. Our presidency really helped with that. We managed to declare very clearly what others might expect from us, in the very best sense of the word. I’m not going to name any surrounding countries – in a positive or negative light. It’s the same with countries as it is with people themselves – relationships are built based on shared needs, values, and goals. It’s up to us, how successful we’ll ultimately be in building those. It’ll also determine how strong we’ll be in upholding our values and putting them across, and therefore also in building our position among others. Both of those things are very closely related to our security as well. And I think we’re doing pretty well so far.
By far the biggest topic these days is Russian aggression against Ukraine. Can you envision any other end to the war than the Russian invaders leaving the entire Ukrainian territory including Crimea?
No!
What do you think of the opinion that the Russian situation is merely a prelude to a much more serious conflict between the West and communist China? Do you see China as enemy number one to western democracies?
A prelude is an intrinsic part of an entire play. However, what we’re witnessing right now is more along the lines of two mostly unrelated performances connected through plot twists alone. A dictatorship with a taste for more power in its region or the entire world, against countries protecting their territory, values, freedom, or simply the right to survive. In both cases, the defending party is at a bit of a disadvantage, because it wants to do the right thing, and therefore sometimes hesitates, sometimes doubts, sometimes takes its time. Democracy itself takes time, and is slower and more considerate by nature. What’s important to me is the idea of the bigger group agreeing on the need to defend, to fight back. If this agreement remains even in our relationship towards China, we’ll prevail. What I see as the biggest factor playing in China’s favor though, is its cunning, and its preparedness for this “play”. Before Europe even got its bearings, many countries or industries were more or less thoroughly dependent on China. And watching the waves our dependency on Russian oil and gas has made in all our lives recently, it is a legitimate worry to consider what impact such a dependency will have on our economies where China is concerned. What is there to do? Firstly, to stand together, and quickly. We shouldn’t expect things to solve themselves or expect America to solve them for us. We need to start building a strategic kind of autonomy in our key industries. In practice, that means no longer blindly supporting electromobility or solar energy unless we can manufacture both locally, and being aware of those areas where one sweeping decision made by China has the power to complicate our lives. It doesn’t mean no longer doing business with China, that’s simply not possible due to the sheer size of its market, but rather learning to define these relationships carefully, and taking into account our strategic and security interests, on top of our immediate economic ones.
Do you support Czech activities such as the planned visit of Taiwan by the Speaker of the Chamber Markéta Pekarová-Adamová, which is sure to stoke the ire of China?
We create friendships based on values and affinities, not based on what our colleagues, partners, or neighbors might think or like. As a sovereign nation, we mustn’t let any other state dictate what we do, not where foreign policy is concerned. My own experience and journey to Taiwan alongside a delegation of European policymakers confirmed that our relationship with that country is exceedingly good, and a very beneficial one. We’ve managed to develop this relationship from a purely symbolic one, into one that benefits both nations in many ways. For example, let me point out the joint effort to educate Czech students about microchips. That’s truly exceptional, even compared to other European countries. Let’s put in hard work, and turn our cooperation with Taiwan into a business opportunity for our country. A sensible foreign policy in any country is based on shared values and upholding national interests. Both of these aspects are included in our cooperation with Taiwan. The Speaker's visit isn’t any kind of a gesture of protest, but rather an expression of this solid cooperation. Our actual real partners on the international level respect this, and we simply can’t help anyone else with their frustration. We mustn’t give in to anybody else’s whims. We can’t but require mutual respect.
CV BOX
Eva Decroix (born June 26, 1982, in Ostrava) is an MP, vice-chair of the ODS parliamentary group, and representative of the Vysočina region.
Not long after she was born, her family moved from Ostrava to Jihlava. After graduating from high school, she headed for Prague, for the Faculty of Education at Charles University, where she began her studies of the French and Czech languages. She met her future husband during a part-time job in a restaurant and then proceeded to put her studies on hold and travel to France with him.
It was there that she completed her law degree (Université Bretagne Sud, then a transfer to Université Lille II). She is currently continuing her doctoral studies at the Faculty of Law at Charles University, Prague.
Decroix is the head of a law firm in Jihlava and in Prague. As a certified mediator, she specializes in alternative conflict resolution.
She’s been a member of the ODS since 2014. She tried her luck running in several municipal and regional elections, but she only ever succeeded in 2020 when she became a regional representative. Between 2020 and 2022, she was a representative of Jihlava, a position she took up after Petr Laštovička’s resignation. She saw success in the 2021 Chamber of Deputies election, running as number 2 on the SPOLU coalition ticket.
Decroix lives in Jihlava. Since 2012, she’s been running a French restaurant called Bistrot de Papa in the village of Horní Dubenky in the Vysočina region alongside her husband Rémi Decroix who is a pastry chef. She has two daughters.
She runs the Bistrot de Papa restaurant with her husband Rémi
Eva Decroix with her daughters
reklama
