Back to Gideon RachmanVaclav Klaus is a difficult man. Vain, boorish, a “climate-change denier”, a Eurosceptic. But I couldn’t help cheering when I read the FT’s account of his address to the European Parliament, whcih was given late last week.
The parliament is a horribly pompous and pampered body - and the Czech president really stuck it to them. He observed, correctly, that the parliament completely marginalises those who dissent from the politically-approved view of the necessity of ever-deeper European integration. And he criticised those “claiming that the status quo, the present institutional form of the EU, is forever uncriticisable dogma.”
Comparing this suffocating political orthodoxy to the Soviet era in which he grew up was perhaps a little over-the-top. But the parliamentarians rather made his point for him - by walking out in large numbers, when Klaus suggested that, since there is no European demos, the EU’s democratic deficit would not be solved by increasing the powers of the European Parliament. Heresy!!
My sympathy for Klaus was only increased, when I saw the FT quoting two of the most insufferably pious and self-important British MEPs - Graham Watson and Richard Corbett - condemning him. Watson claimed that Klaus’s address was “astonishing”. Corbett called the speech “embarrassing.” And the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering supplied a nice example of the thinking that Klaus was taking aim at, when he observed that the Czech president should be grateful because - “In a ‘parliament of the past’, you wouldn’t have been able to give such a speech.” He then re-assured his shcoked colleagues that Klaus’s views were those of a minority of Europeans - and therefore irrelevant.
This blog covers a variety of topics from US foreign policy to European politics and the Middle East - and whatever else happens to be in the news or catch my attention. I joined the FT as chief foreign affairs commentator in 2006, after a 15-year career at The Economist which included stints as a correspondent in Brussels, Bangkok and Washington. I write a weekly column on foreign affairs, which appears in the paper on Tuesdays. Occasionally my FT colleagues contribute posts to this blog.
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