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Václav Klaus at the MCC Brussels Conference

English Pages, 2. 12. 2025

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

Many thanks for inviting me to attend this important gathering and to speak here. Here in Brussels. I have to stress the name of this city. For most of you, coming to Brussels is probably quite normal, but not for me. Of course, I visited this city many times during my years as Prime Minister and President of the Czech Republic, but that is over. In the last more than a decade, I visited Brussels only once. It has ceased to be the city of my dreams. The city is in many respects much different when compared to the year 1962, when I happened to play in a basketball tournament here. 

It was nine years ago, in 2016, when I was here last time. I came here to present the Flemish version of my book “Europe All Inclusive: A Brief Guide to Understanding the Current Migration Crisis”. This book was highly critical of West European (and EU) approval of mass migration to Europe, critical of Angela Merkel’s slogan “Wir schaffen das”, and critical of the widespread European illusory fiction that it is normal to migrate and that everyone has a right to do so. This idea is a direct denial of the concept of the nation state. We see the consequences in many places of Europe, Great Britain is probably the leader in this respect. 

I repeatedly argued that we misinterpret the reasons for migration. European demand for migrants was much more important as a source of migration than their supply. Not the other way around, as it is usually proclaimed. I remember the Belgian public TV being extremely aggressive toward me and my views during that visit. I have almost no similar experience – former Heads of State usually enjoy at least some elementary respect abroad. At home, it is, of course, something else.             

Since the 1990s, Brussels has become an incorporation of everything a European democrat has to disagree with. I disagree with the suppression of nation states, as well as with the glorification of supranational institutions. I disagree with the blocking of elementary principles of market economy and with the promotion of debilitating regulation – regulation that reminds us, who experienced communism, more and more of the old central planning. Political correctness and the ongoing masterminding of our fates by powerful Brussels elites who rule without the elementary checks and balances are equally unacceptable. These checks and balances are inevitable for democracy to function, but they don’t exist in the EU. 

Some of us have devoted our lives to opposing such or similar arrangements, which – as many people are now belatedly beginning to understand – are connected not only with the evidently oppressive and tragically functioning communism. As we see, they are connected with similar systems based on other collectivistic ideologies as well. 

I apologize for such a rapid and only proclamatory summary of my position, but it is impossible to comprehensibly discuss these topics in a short conference speech. 

Let me therefore pick up two partial topics as examples of what I see as relevant. 

You decided to call today’s conference the “Battle for the Soul of Europe”. Is it a correct and reasonable title? I don’t think so. It is a topic I discussed sixteen years ago with the distinguished Viennese Cardinal Christoph Schönborn at a discussion forum in the Bavarian city of Passau. The question raised then was: “Is there a soul of Europe?” or, in a milder form, “Is there a common idea of Europe?” The comments I made there can be found on my website (in German). 

The Europeists, the naïve advocates of European political unification, who organized the debate in Passau, were searching for a concept that could have a positive “Europe-integrating effect”. I disagreed. As I put it then: “Europe does not have a common idea, it cannot have one, and it does not need one.” I suggested instead that we look for an authentic common denominator, which I find in freedom, something that truly belongs to Europe. But freedom is not the soul of Europe. Freedom is a social, or better said societal arrangement, in which an individual man (or woman) is not controlled or masterminded by the state. 

Fighting for freedom does not mean fighting for a pan-continental community or for a culturally totally homogeneous area. Europe is not homogenous. We also shouldn’t pretend that there is a common history of Europe (there is, of course, not). And we shouldn’t artificially invent the “soul of Europe”. Such efforts can only lead to the falsification of history and of today’s reality. Our continent has neither a common idea nor a soul. The existence of a few generally accepted values is important, but doesn’t create a soul. 

I always stress that the undisputable existence of a European civilizational space is something entirely different from the artificial construct called the European Union. Let’s not mix these two things together. 

I asked artificial intelligence whether I had ever used the term “soul of Europe”. The answer was no. He (or she) also said that I had used the term “collective psyche of Europe”. But I used it ironically, as something promoted by Europeist elites in their efforts to advance the very questionable project of European political unification. 

Let’s look at the EU pragmatically and realistically. It is a grouping of countries which have a few common interests and want to pursue them together. The economists would talk about the so-called public good at a continental level, but they know that there are not many. 

Let me turn to my second topic. I attend one European forum after another. European society is affluent enough to generously finance such gatherings. One of the prominent figures at such meetings is Mario Draghi (but we could name some other well-known conference speakers as well). His recent Rimini speech motivated me to call him – at a forum in Lugano – the Gorbachev of Ursula von der Leyen’s European Union. He speaks as a typical “perestroika” man, if anyone still remembers that term. Draghi wants to keep the basis of the current EU arrangements intact. Gorbachev also wanted to preserve communism, but aimed to make it – technocratically – more efficient. 

After the fall of communism, we – in most of Central and East European countries – rejected the idea of perestroika, this form of a “third way”, and declared instead that we wanted capitalism, the first way. I don’t intend to give a history seminar here, I talk about it because I am convinced that we – similarly – need a systemic change in the whole of Europe now. 

The markets are not free. The markets in Europe have been so heavily taxed, regulated and repressed in the last decades that – instead of an information revolution or digitalization – we need a return to free markets. Digitalization is not the opposite of an overregulated market, but a method for making regulation easier and more efficient. The ambition of the political elites is to regulate us more effectively. Today, the economies of EU countries are in a subordinate position. The economy is once again dictated by politics. 

The Green Deal is the most evident embodiment of green policies, and in spite of all the criticism from many reasonable opponents, the EU is falling deeper and deeper into this trap, into this irresponsible fallacy. To get rid of it, we need free speech, as the only way to come to a fundamental change, not just another perestroika. 

I am convinced the MCC conference is a rare event here in Brussels which makes a free exchange of views possible. Thank you for inviting me to come and speak here.                                      

Václav Klaus, “Battle for the Soul of Europe”, MCC Brussels Conference, December 3, 2025, Brussels.