Britannia Radio

This full version of the whole of the recent speech comes indirectly
to me from AE: who was forwarding a posting by Ashley Mote MEP.

It is the voice of a free Europe from a great patriot, Vaclav Klaus,
president of the Czech Republic

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Mr. Chairman, Members of European Parliament,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to thank you for the possibility to speak
here, in the European Parliament, in one of the key institutions of
the European Union. I have been here several times but never before
had an opportunity to speak at a plenary session. Therefore I do
appreciate your invitation. The elected representatives of 27
countries with a broad spectrum of political opinions and views make
a unique auditorium, as unique and in essence as revolutionary as the
experiment of the European Union itself. For more than half a
century, the EU has attempted to make decision-making in Europe
better by moving a significant part of decisions from the individual
states to the European institutions.

I’ve come here from the capital of the Czech Republic, from Prague,
from the historic centre of the Czech statehood, from one of the
important places where European thinking, European culture and
European civilisation has emerged and developed. I come as a
representative of the Czech state, which has always, in all its
various forms, been part of the European history, of a state, that
has many times taken a direct and important part in shaping this
history, and which wants to continue shaping it also today.

Nine years have passed since the president of the Czech Republic last
spoke to you. That was my predecessor, Václav Havel, and it was four
years before our accession to the European Union. Several weeks ago,
the Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, also held a speech here, as
a leader of a country presiding over the EU Council. His speech
focused on topics, based on the priorities of the Czech presidency,
as well as on the topical problems the EU countries are facing now.

This allows me to focus on issues that are more general, and – at
first sight – perhaps less dramatic than solving the current
economic crisis, the Ukrainian-Russian gas conflict, or the Gaza
situation. I do believe, however, these issues are of extraordinary
importance for the further development of the European integration
project.

In less than three months, the Czech Republic will commemorate the
fifth anniversary of its EU accession. We will commemorate it with
dignity. We will commemorate it as a country, which – unlike some
other new member countries – does not feel disappointed over
unfulfilled expectations connected with our membership. This is no
surprise to me and there is a rational explanation for it. Our
expectations were realistic. We knew well that we were entering a
community formed and shaped by human beings. We knew it was not a
utopian construction, put together without authentic human interests,
visions, views and ideas. These interests as well as ideas can be
found all over the EU and it cannot be otherwise.

We interpreted our EU accession on one hand as a confirmation of the
fact that we had managed, quite rapidly, over less than fifteen years
since the fall of communism, to become a standard European country
again. On the other hand, we considered (and we still do) the
opportunity to actively take part in the European integration process
as a chance to take advantage of the already highly integrated Europe
and – at the same time – to influence this process according to
our views. We feel our share of responsibility for the development of
the European Union and with this feeling of responsibility we
approach our presidency of the EU Council. I believe that the first
six weeks of the Czech presidency have convincingly demonstrated our
responsible attitude.

At this forum, I would like to repeat once again clearly and loudly
– for those of you who don’t know it or do not want to know – my
conviction, that for us there was and there is no alternative to the
European Union membership and that in our country there is no
relevant political force that could or would want to undermine this
position. We have been therefore really touched by the repeated and
growing attacks we have been facing; attacks based on the unfounded
assumption that the Czechs are searching for some other integration
project than the one they became members of five years ago. This is
not true.

The citizens of the Czech Republic feel that the European integration
has an important and needed mission and task. It can be summarized in
the following way:

- removing unnecessary – and for human freedom and prosperity
counterproductive – barriers to the free movement of people, goods,
services, ideas, political philosophies, world views, cultural
patterns and behaviour models that have been for various reasons over
the centuries formed among the individual European states;

- a joint care of the public goods, existing on the continental
level, meaning projects that cannot be effectively carried out
through bilateral negotiations of two (or more) neighbouring European
countries.

The efforts to realise these two objectives – removing barriers and
rationally selecting issues that should be solved at the continental
level – are not and will never be completed. Various barriers and
obstacles still remain and the decision-making at the Brussels level
is certainly more numerous than would be optimal. Certainly there are
more numerous than the people in the individual member states ask
for. You, Members of the European Parliament, are certainly well
aware of this. The question I want to ask you is therefore a purely
theoretical one: are you really convinced that every time you take a
vote, you are deciding something that must be decided here in this
hall and not closer to the citizens, i.e. inside the individual
European states?

In the politically correct rhetoric we keep hearing these days, we
often hear about other possible effects of European integration,
which are, however, of lesser and secondary importance. These are,
moreover, driven by the ambitions of professional politicians and the
people connected to them, not by the interests of ordinary citizens
of the member states.

When I said, that the European Union membership did not have and does
not have any alternative; I only mentioned half of what must be said.
The other – logical – half of my statement is that the methods and
forms of European integration do, on the contrary, have quite a
number of possible and legitimate variants, just as they proved to
have in the last half century. There is no end of history. Claiming
that the status quo, the present institutional form of the EU, is a
forever uncriticizable dogma, is a mistake that has been –
unfortunately – rapidly spreading, even though it is in direct
contradiction not only with rational thinking, but also with the
whole two-thousand- year history of European civilization. The same
mistake applies to the a priori postulated, and therefore equally
uncriticizable, assumption that there is only one possible and
correct future of the European integration, which is the “ever-
closer Union”, i.e. advancement towards deeper and deeper political
integration of the member countries.

Neither the present status quo, nor the assumption that the permanent
deepening of the integration is a blessing, is – or should be – a
dogma for any European democrat. The enforcement of these notions by
those, who consider themselves – to use the phrase of the famous
Czech writer Milan Kundera – “the owners of the keys” to
European integration, is unacceptable.

Moreover, it is self evident, that one or another institutional
arrangement of the European Union is not an objective in itself; but
a tool for achieving the real objectives. These are nothing but human
freedom and such economic system that would bring prosperity. That
system is a market economy.

This would certainly be the wish of the citizens of all member
countries. Yet, over the twenty years since the fall of communism, I
have been repeatedly witnessing that the feelings and fears are
stronger among those who spent a great part of the 20th century
without freedom and struggled under a dysfunctional centrally planned
and state-administered economy. It is no surprise that these people
are more sensitive and responsive to any phenomena and tendencies
leading in other directions than towards freedom and prosperity. The
citizens of the Czech Republic are among those I’m talking about.

The present decision making system of the European Union is different
from a classic parliamentary democracy, tested and proven by history.
In a normal parliamentary system, part of the MPs support the
government and part support the opposition. In the European
parliament, this arrangement has been missing. Here, only one single
alternative is being promoted and those who dare thinking about a
different option are labelled as enemies of the European integration.
Not so long ago, in our part of Europe we lived in a political system
that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary
opposition. It was through this experience that we learned the bitter
lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom. That is why
political alternatives must exist.

And not only that. The relationship between a citizen of one or
another member state and a representative of the Union is not a
standard relationship between a voter and a politician, representing
him or her. There is also a great distance (not only in a
geographical sense) between citizens and Union representatives, which
is much greater than it is the case inside the member countries. This
distance is often described as the democratic deficit, the loss of
democratic accountability, the decision making of the unelected –
but selected – ones, as bureaucratisation of decision making etc.
The proposals to change the current state of affairs – included in
the rejected European Constitution or in the not much different
Lisbon Treaty – would make this defect even worse.

Since there is no European demos – and no European nation – this
defect cannot be solved by strengthening the role of the European
parliament either. This would, on the contrary, make the problem
worse and lead to an even greater alienation between the citizens of
the European countries and Union institutions. The solution will be
neither to add fuel to the “melting pot” of the present type of
European integration, nor to suppress the role of member states in
the name of a new multicultural and multinational European civil
society. These are attempts that have failed every time in the past,
because they did not reflect the spontaneous historical development.

I fear that the attempts to speed up and deepen integration and to
move decisions about the lives of the citizens of the member
countries up to the European level can have effects that will
endanger all the positive things achieved in Europe in the last half
a century. Let us not underestimate the fears of the citizens of many
member countries, who are afraid, that their problems are again
decided elsewhere and without them, and that their ability to
influence these decisions is very limited. So far, the European Union
has been successful, partly thanks to the fact that the vote of each
member country had the same weight and thus could not be ignored. Let
us not allow a situation where the citizens of member countries would
live their lives with a resigned feeling that the EU project is not
their own; that it is developing differently than they would wish,
that they are only forced to accept it. We would very easily and very
soon slip back to the times that we hoped belonged to history.

This is closely connected with the question of prosperity. We must
say openly that the present economic system of the EU is a system of
a suppressed market, a system of a permanently strengthening
centrally controlled economy. Although history has more than clearly
proven that this is a dead end, we find ourselves walking the same
path once again. This results in a constant rise in both the extent
of government masterminding and constraining of spontaneity of the
market processes. In recent months, this trend has been further
reinforced by incorrect interpretation of the causes of the present
economic and financial crisis, as if it was caused by free market,
while in reality it is just the contrary – caused by political
manipulation of the market. It is again necessary to point out to the
historical experience of our part of Europe and to the lessons we
learned from it.

Many of you certainly know the name of the French economist Frederic
Bastiat and his famous Petition of the Candlemakers, which has become
a well-known and canonical reading, illustrating the absurdity of
political interventions in the economy. On 14 November 2008 the
European Commission approved a real, not a fictitious Bastiat’s
Petition of the Candlemakers, and imposed a 66% tariff on candles
imported from China. I would have never believed that a 160-year-old
essay could become a reality, but it has happened. An inevitable
effect of the extensive implementation of such measures in Europe is
economic slowdown, if not a complete halt of economic growth. The
only solution is liberalisation and deregulation of the European
economy.

I say all of this because I do feel a strong responsibility for the
democratic and prosperous future of Europe. I have been trying to
remind you of the elementary principles upon which European
civilisation has been based for centuries or even millennia;
principles, the validity of which is not affected by time, principles
that are universal and should be therefore followed even in the
present European Union. I am convinced that the citizens of
individual member countries do want freedom, democracy and economic
prosperity.

At this moment in time, the most important task is to make sure that
free discussion about these problems is not silenced as an attack on
the very idea of European integration. We have always believed that
being allowed to discuss such serious issues, being heard, defending
everyone’s right to present a different than “the only correct
opinion” – no matter how much we may disagree with it – is at
the very core of the democracy we were denied for over four decades.
We, who went through the involuntary experience that taught us that a
free exchange of opinions and ideas is the basic condition for a
healthy democracy, do hope, that this condition will be met and
respected also in the future. This is the opportunity and the only
method for making the European Union more free, more democratic and
more prosperous.

Václav Klaus, European Parliament, Brussels, 19 Februar