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Václav Klaus in Karpacz: What Future for Europe?

English Pages, 2. 9. 2025

1. Many thanks for the invitation to the Karpacz Economic Forum 2025. This Forum is undoubtedly the largest conference of its kind in our region, that is, in Central Europe. To my great regret, we don’t have anything similar in my country, in the Czech Republic. There are several reasons for this, but the most important one is that Poland has a foreign policy and is, therefore, able to have its own views and political stances. 

I cannot say the same about my country. Having its own foreign policy means being aware of its national interests. It also demonstrates a willingness to defend them. Many other EU member-states don’t have this. I know this is neither an innocent nor uncontroversial statement, but, to my great regret, I have to say it. I am afraid that the imminent parliamentary elections will not make a change. 

2. I have been to Karpacz already four times in a row. It was in an era that brought us new topics, new challenges, new dramatic developments, some of which will be discussed here. Several months ago, the organizers originally asked me to speak here in the panel entitled Climate Change – a Shared Responsibility. It was for me a pleasant but surprising opportunity because for at least two decades I have been a fundamental critic and opponent of the official EU ideology of climate alarmism. I don’t hide that I disagree with the doctrine of man-made global warming, allegedly caused by CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions connected with human activity, especially with the use of fossil fuels. There is no time to discuss this in detail in the opening plenary session, but I will give the text of my prepared speech on this topic to the organizers and will ask them to publish it on the Forum’s website. Let me at least mention that the U.S. Ministry of Energy recently published a new report, which is very close to my views. 

3. This opening session’s title correctly asks “’What Future for Europe?”. In my view, it is a fundamental topic of our time. However, it implicitly assumes that Europe has a positive, meaningful, democratic and prosperous future. This presupposes – optimistically – that Europe is able to make a fundamental transition, because without a radical transition a good future is not possible. The second part of the title of this opening session, “Time of Transition”, correctly suggests that transition is necessary and possible, that there are politicians and political parties interested in it and ready to make it, and – especially – that the general public genuinely asks for a fundamental, but inevitably risky, change. This is an optimistic assumption which I don’t fully share. 

4. I am convinced that a meaningful transition would require fundamental changes in the substance of the European integration process on the one hand, and changes in the political, economic and social systems in individual EU member states on the other. Achieving this would require getting rid of some of the – until now untouchable – pillars of today’s Europe and of the ideology behind them. 

This would ask for forgetting that “more Europe” is better than less Europe, that the ongoing centralization and bureaucratization of Europe are productive, that the Green Deal is inevitable and will make Europe more prosperous, that the society can abandon well-known economic imperatives without serious consequences, etc. 

There is not enough time in this opening session to develop these ideas extensively but let me at least stress that I have serious doubts about the possibility and feasibility of such change in a foreseeable future. The Karpacz Forum should initiate a serious discussion on this topic. 

Václav Klaus, 34th Karpacz Economic Forum, Karpacz, Poland, September 2, 2025.