Straight talk from the Czech President
Europeans have not yet faced up to such "serious underlying issues," Mr. Klaus said, because "they are still in the dream world of welfare, long vacations, guaranteed high pensions and cradle-to-grave social security."
The biggest challenge for the Czech Republic, Mr. Klaus said, is to avoid falling into the trap of "a new form of collectivism." Asked whether he meant a new form of neo-Marxism, he said, "Absolutely not, but I see other sectors endangering free societies.
"The enemies of free societies today are those who want to burden us down again with layer upon layer of regulations," Mr. Klaus said.
"We had that in communist times. But now if you look at all the new rules and regulations of EU membership, layered bureaucracy is staging a comeback."
The European Union's 30,000 bureaucrats have produced some 80,000 pages of regulations that the Czech Republic and the other applicants for EU membership will have to adopt. |
