‘Nation states should retain control over their monetary and fiscal policies’

5 Questions with President Vaclav Klaus

By Brett M. Decker

Vaclav Klaus is the president of the Czech Republic. A former prime minister, finance minister and founder of the center-right Civic Democratic Party, he was elected in 2003 to succeed Vaclav Havel to become his country’s second president since the Velvet Revolution led to freedom from Soviet domination in 1989. He was reelected president in 2008. An economist by profession, his free-market seminars were spied upon by secret police during the dark days of communism. An outspoken opponent of meddlesome and incompetent big government, Mr. Klaus has pushed for deregulation of business and decentralization of the European Union bureaucracy. You can find out more about the president at: www.hrad.cz/en/president-of-the-cr/current-president-of-the-cr-vaclav-klaus/curriculm-vitae.shtml.

Decker: You are renowned as a “Eurosceptic.” What is it about the European political union that concerns you? Is political and economic union really possible among such a diverse collection of nations?

Klaus: I don’t like the term “Eurosceptic”; there are only Euro-realists and Euro-naivists in Europe these days — and I am certainly not a Euro-naivist. I live in Europe and care about democracy and sovereignty of nation states there. That is why I wrote the book “Europe: The Shattering of Illusions” to be published by Bloomsbury on Sept. 27. We witness a growing tendency of the EU institutions, especially of the unelected Commission, to make decisions about most of the issues of our lives. I resolutely oppose this development as undemocratic.

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