Britannia Radio

I have had the great pleasure - and privilege come to that - of an exchange of correspondence with the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, whose government took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council at the beginning of 2009.
 
My correspondence followed the disgraceful attempts by the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee, and the presidents of the various political groups during a separate visit, to threaten, cajole, insult and generally vilify the Czech Republic's president to his face.  It was blatant, disgraceful offensive behaviour wholly inappropriate to a head of state.
 
As everyone in the Bruges Group knows from his courageous speech to the Thatcher dinner a few weeks previously, Mr Klaus is a brave and straightforward man who is willing to stand up for what he thinks is right.
 
That includes not signing the Lisbon Treaty and not flying the EU banner from his presidential home.
 
It also includes telling the EU that the Czech Republic is "not a province of the EU".  A blast of fresh air after the cringe-making French presidency just finished, with Sarkozy tearing around the EU like a latter-day Napoleon.
 
The EU press machine is already spinning stories of President Klaus' "weak government" and its chances of survival.  You can be sure the EU's backroom boys are already trying to undermine his government's credibility and if they can engineer its fall during the Czech Republic's presidency between Jan 1 and June 30, you can be sure they will. 
 
That is where the slush money will be spent.  Be sure of it.
 
I also now know that President Klaus reads letters from ordinary people and dictates his own replies.
 
He may be a rarity, but he is exactly the sort of rarity we desperately need.  All strength to him.

Which is why I have just sent him a copy of my letter to the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering, (German centre-right), following the exchanges between the two men in Prague before Christmas.

Dear Mr Pottering

In the widely publicised exchanges between you and President Klaus during the visit of the Conference of Presidents to Prague in December you interpreted some of his remarks as being a reference to the parallels between the EU and the Soviet Union.  From the verbatim record it seems you made the connection, not President Klaus.

Might you, therefore, care to comment on the remarks made by my honourable, brave and distinguished friend and former Russian dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, who has made exactly the same comments in the past.

He has listed the similarities thus:

An unelected executive government.

Members electing each other.

Members not accountable to anyone else.

Meetings in secret.

A puppet parliament, in their case the Supreme Soviet, rubber-stamping the executive's decisions.

A ruling elite of bureaucrats protected from prosecution, enjoying luxurious employment packages and lifetime benefits, likely to be promoted rather than sacked, if they are failures.

The public interest comes a poor second to retaining control and power.

Whereas the USSR used coercion and armed force to retain control, the EU uses coercion and economic bullying.

In the USSR ordinary people were told the ruling elite was creating a new world - the "New Soviet".  They should forget nationhood, identity and become the "new soviet" people.  The EU is on a similar path, using mass migration and endless talk of "common interests" and "integration".  Lisbon even introduced the notion of a new European citizenship.

In the USSR corruption was built-in from the top down.  In the EU it is also part of the system (see Siim Kallas' latest defence of "acceptable" waste of taxpayers' money, and successive Court of Auditors' reports).

In the USSR whistleblowers against corruption were punished.  So they are in the EU.

In the USSR, dissidents were sent to the Gulags.  In the EU political correctness is increasingly used as an intellectual Gulag, to isolate argument unacceptable to the elite (current example: alleged climate change).

The USSR claimed its existence avoided war.  So does the EU.

The USSR used the Russian rouble to create an illusion of one country.  The euro was created for the same purpose.

The USSR had the seeds of its own destruction within it because it was incapable of fundamental reform as the world moved on.  It remains to be seen if the EU shares that characteristic, too. 

Self-destruction of the USSR left behind huge economic, ethnic and demographic problems.  The EU is bound to do the same - whether sooner or later.

The USSR knew - long before the end - that it had to keep on expanding or it would collapse.  It seems the EU knows that, too.

Vladimir Bukovsky later shared the astonishment of Mikhail Gorbachev when he realised that the EU was the old Soviet model repackaged for western consumption.  It was another attempt to solve the problems of the 1930s with solutions of the 1950s.  

The EU still is.

These are a formidable list of similarities.

In view of your comments in Prague, do you recognise these parallels?

If not, why not?

Ashley Mote