Vaclav Klaus celebrated themselves as the last bulwark against Lisbon and sole supporter of freedom and democracy in Europe. However, he gave himself: "I was the one who handed the application for EU membership in 1996 and signed the Treaty of Accession in 2002." (Part 1 ...) he should actually not have known what was coming at him "But the agreement within the EU? have many alternatives. One of them [the Lisbon Treaty, Anm.d.Aut.] Be regarded as sakrosant, untouchable, where you can not log in doubt or criticism, is against the very character of Europe. "
Who is Klaus? Born in 1941 in Prague is actually an economist, he completed his studies in the 1960s under the socialist regime of Czechoslovakia in Italy and the USA. Then Klaus worked in the academic setting and in the Czechoslovak Central Bank. He never stood out as real dissident. He was Czechoslovak Minister of Finance, from 1992-97 he was the Czech Prime Minister, 2003 then President in 1989. Three main things are connected to Klaus: The separation of Slovakia (1993), which was not without controversy, the introduction of a free market economy and the EU accession of the Czech Republic. Moreover, Klaus is a staunch transatlanticist why he campaigned for the deployment of the American missile defense system in the Czech Republic and had no problems with a deterioration of relations with Russia.
Klaus depends on neoliberalism and sat down in the Czech Republic expressly for the introduction of the free, not the social, market economy. The Margaret Thatcher-friend is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, a federation of economic theorists who uphold the memory of Milton Friedman and Friedrich August von. Hayek. The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is particularly worried about the fact that there be a strong state, and that the social benefits and influence of trade unions could get out of hand. All of these are well-known, neoliberal guiding principles that are tested on live subjects for over thirty years. (Recommended in this context, the critical appreciation of Naomi Klein. "Shock Doctrine, the Rise of Katastophen-capitalism") "freedom" Klaus understood primarily as freedom for capital flows, corporations and businesses to remain unmolested by the state. The MPS is very influential and linked at the highest level. She has excellent contacts with more than 90 think tanks.
On 28.8.2005 Klaus said at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Iceland:
"Fifteen years after the collapse of communism, I'm more afraid than before before his softer (weaker) version, the social democracy which has become under many different names such as welfare state or social market economy, the dominant model of economic and social system of contemporary Western civilization . It relies on a large and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior and on income redistribution on a large scale. "
As illiberal and also capped socialist Klaus looks at various isms or movements: the environmental movement, the radical human rights movement and the civil society movement, feminism, multiculturalism, Europismus. All wanted a refeudalization society because they wanted privileges for certain groups. Everywhere lurking circumcision of freedom and post-Marxist collectivism. He warns not to destroy the European political system [created by legislation, Anm.d.Aut.] By a "post-modern interpretation of human rights with emphasis on positive rights, the emphasis of Gruppenrechten- and claims about individual rights and responsibilities and with the denationalization of citizenship. "
And further: "Europe is a system of relations and connections of individual countries, which may not be based on false internationalism, free to supranational organizations and on a misunderstanding of globalization and foreign relations, but the on good neighborhood, sovereign countries and on international pacts should be established and agreements. "
Much of what Klaus says, fully justified. But even allowing for Klaus' aversion to government regulation through its experience under socialism and the fact that maintaining the quoted speech of Reykjavik before the crisis is, I simply incomprehensible how Klaus can argue that only group interests and collectivism a would cause refeudalization.
There are facts for many years, proving that just a completely unmolested by the states economy leads to a new feudalism, as namely View all States as their prey banks and corporations. This can be whether their de facto power wealth and their options quite equate with a new quasi-aristocratic upper class. Klaus needs as an economist familiar with relevant statistics that prove the gigantic redistribution from bottom to top, have been used for this economic recipes of the Chicago School (Milton Friedman). (Eg in the USA since the Reaganomics, in the UK since Thatcher, in South America. Chile after the overthrow of Allende, Argentina and many other countries)
"In December 2006, a month after Friedman's death, came out at a UN investigation that the richest two percent of all adults on Earth for more than half of global household wealth. 'Has the most egregious dimensions of this shift in the United achieved States, where in 1980 - when Reagan launched his crusade Friedman'schen - on average a CEO 43 times as much earned as a worker; 2005 swept the corporate leaders 411 times as much one. "(Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, p 627)
For all that Klaus is obviously blind. What worried him, are constitutionally enshrined special rights for certain social groups (homosexuals, women / feminism), which he rejects as "over-regulation".
Vaclav Klaus floats an EU mainly as a free economic union before, not as a close political union. However, it dawned rather late, that both aspects are each sides of the same Euro-medal and he can lead a discussion with itself: It can be found namely for alternatives to the Lisbon Treaty no more discussion partners. For the European peoples were indeed allowed to participate in discussions outside before.
On 20.2.2009 , he said the 27-nation bloc should care more about the offer of prosperity, because drop to closer political union and the stalled EU reform treaty, as the Irish voters had already rejected him. Klaus outraged particular that further integration "has become a not criticisable assumption that there is only one possible and correct future of European integration. The imposition of this interpretation is unacceptable. Those who dare thinking about a different option are labeled as enemies. "
Therefore, Klaus feels even more reminiscent of the times of communism when the Soviet Union Eastern Europe controlled and deviation or discussions were not tolerated: "Not too long ago, we lived in our part of Europe under a political system that no alternative and therefore also no parliamentary opposition allowed. We have learned the bitter lesson that there is no freedom without opposition. "From the controlled press these submissions by Klaus were always reproduced mutilated, as if he had blindly compared the EU with the former Soviet Union, while his comments are completely understandable .
At a ceremony marking the 91st anniversary of the founding of the Czech Republic Klaus warned on 29/10/2009 because even before the renewed loss of state sovereignty. Twenty years after the end of the communist dictatorship, the decision-making authority would be by the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty again delivered on important issues "to a foreign political power". "It comes to a dangerous erosion of the States in the context of advancing European integration. Another reason why people take the state and its institutions no longer as something true, on which one can rely. "
Klaus was certainly not only criticism but also applause from other countries of the former Eastern Bloc.
So wrote the Slovenian daily newspaper Vest (Elena Pecaric) on 13/10/2009:
"We can not allow politicians to serve us and against us are responsible, define, alter or enlarge to involve without the people who have given them power itself. Elected officials are not the owners of popular sovereignty. You have to change no right competences and responsibilities of the institutions own authority. ... What has happened during the long history of the Constitutional Treaty and the subsequent metamorphosis to the Lisbon Treaty is a major abuse of power by the EU leaders at the expense and to the detriment of its citizens, so all. We must not forget. The systematic and planned blockade our right to decide in each country in a referendum for or against it, as well as the great fraud in Ireland are proof that the EU representatives seized power and have undermined their own legitimacy. "
There is nothing to add.
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Tags: the rise of disaster capitalism , The Shock Doctrine , Friedrich August von Hayek. , Milton Friedman , Mont Pelerin Society , Naomi Klein , Vaclav Klaus
