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Václav Klaus: Is Europe at the Crossroads?

Projevy a vystoupení, 12. 4. 2025

Many thanks for the invitation to your today’s gathering. As a true Czech patriot, I am glad that the non-Czech Patriots have decided to organize their conference here in Prague. The free exchange of views may help us in reaching our aims and ambitions. I feel very strongly that we live in a dangerously unpatriotic, or perhaps even antipatriotic era. I suppose you feel it similarly. To get together and to speak to each other is important, especially at this moment. Once again, thank you for coming to Prague.

I often hesitate about topics and titles of my speeches, but this time I did not have to. I accepted the title the organizers suggested to me and put in the programme of the conference. My title is, therefore, “Europe at the crossroads”. I allowed myself to make just a small change, in my way of understanding the world, however, a fundamental change – I added a question mark. I ask: Are we really at the crossroads? I am not sure. Without a question mark, the title looks like a generally accepted descriptive statement, as if there were no doubts about it. I dare to disagree. I disagree even though I know that the Patriots take it as a part of their political vision.

This seems to me a premature, if not fully apodictic statement. It should not be so. Any statement about reality must be built on a solid foundation before it can serve as a useful political argument.

There is no doubt that we – who are here today – see the situation in Europe as so tragic and, therefore, unacceptable that we almost do not need to prove it again and again. We take this evaluation for given. It is a wrong attitude. Not everyone sees it that way. I am, of course, aware of hundreds of books, articles and speeches radically criticizing the current state of affairs in Europe, but I am still looking for more academic ones. I don’t see any solid and persuasive evidence that we have already reached the moment when it deserves to be called a crossroads.

A lot of people make mistakes of that type. To my great surprise, even one of Europe’s best journalists, my good friend, the editor in chief of Die Weltwoche, Roger Köppel, writes in one of his recent commentaries (March 20, 2025): “At the moment, the conservatives are gaining ground.”. Roger goes on to say that “the former outsider Orbán will soon embody something like the European mainstream”. I wish this were true. Such statements are for me an example of dangerous wishful thinking. We shouldn’t make them.  They may demotivate some of our friends, colleagues and supporters.

The term crossroads doesn’t say that we face two or more ways or directions from which we should choose. It implies much more It suggests that we have already reached a moment when the change is imminent. As I see it, we – in Europe as well as in the whole West – have not yet reached that moment.

We are – to my great regret - “only” disappointed, angry, even outraged by what is going on in our countries. It doesn’t mean that we have reached a moment when our societies are ready (and willing) to make a change. Our “societies” regretfully think differently than Patriots.  

It may be useful to compare this to our communist era experience. Were we – people in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe – at the crossroads in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s? My answer is no. Some of us were resolutely against the communist political and economic arrangements already at that time, but the regime (and the system) was far from being close to disruption. It lasted until 1989. The bulk of society didn’t ask for a change at that time. It is similar now.

When we use this parallel with communism, I am afraid that as regards the degree of disgust and disapproval of the current political and economic arrangements we in Europe are not in the 1980s, and it is debatable whether we still do not find ourselves in the 1970s. We are not in 1989.

It is difficult to quantify it. I don’t suggest to measure the feeling of general approval or disapproval of the current political arrangements by the proportion of Patriots MEPs in the European Parliament, which is about 11,4 % (84 MEPs out of 705), but even this gives us an important information.

I dare to argue that there isn’t abasic disagreement with the current Western economic and political system in our societies. To my great regret. I myself am in a disagreement with it, especially when I use as a benchmark the expectations we had in the moment of the fall of communism more than 35 years ago. Let me very briefly indicate my main points of disagreement:

1.   I am in total disagreement with our, I mean European, political system, called liberal democracy. It has turned out to be a caricature of democracy. It can’t be otherwise because it is based on ideologically undefined and, therefore, fuzzy political parties. It leads to the loss of importance of parliaments and to the increasing dominance of non-elected NGOs in our public life.

2.   I am in total disagreement with the contemporary economic system which is based on the distrust of the market and on a steadily growing trust in the government and its ability to substitute the markets. It reminds me more and more of the inefficient communist central planning.

3.   I am in total disagreement with the year by year growing fundamental disbelief in traditional values and institutions, with the attempts at redefining human nature, at redefining what is normal and what is not normal, at redefining what reflects and guarantees the continuation of – over centuries and millennia evolutionary built – principles of human society, principles we conservatives believe in.

4.   I am in total disagreement with the current propaganda of war (and of ridiculing peace) and with the advocacy of hegemonial governance of the world, as we can see it in the current misinterpretation of the causes and the course of the Ukraine war.[1]

To make a change, which means to get rid of the deep state and to transform the international order, people don’t only need a firm conviction that the existing system is basically wrong. They also need an example of a viable alternative, of a better functioning system. In the communist era it was easy to find it in the – then – free, democratic and economically functioning West. It was then, it was before progressivist, woke, multicultural and green revolutions.

There is not a similar model these days. For us, here in Prague, it is not Western Europe, it is not America, and it definitely is not China. In our institute, we have published two books with the title “The Self-Destruction of the West” (in Czech), and a book with the title “Brave New West” (in English). Next week I will launch my book with the title “In Defence of Normalcy” (also in English). My arguments are more seriously developed there.

There is a spark of hope, however. Something new and hopeful happened five months ago. I have in mind the Trump’s victory in American presidential elections and his opening of the window of opportunity not just for his own country, but for all of us as well. Trump has started a new era of international politics, returned national interests into the substance of politics and keeps advocating the already forgotten and disgraced conservative principles, I would say “principles of normalcy and of common sense”.

Such an impulse was much needed and has already had huge consequences. The question is: what it will mean for us, for our future, for our chances to make necessary changes also here, in Europe, and especially in our Central Europe?

It will depend on us. We must continue fighting all the absurdities of progressivism, multiculturalism, environmentalism and globalism. We must make politics in the interests of the citizens of our own countries, not of the Brussels bureaucracy, not of Soros-type NGOs, not of UN apparatchiks, and not of the universalist international media.

Trump’s election victory and his radical entry into office has shaken the world. He has attacked many long-standing habits, traditions, and behavioural patterns, and by doing so he has endangered the comfortable existence of many European politicians who got used to the living in a world of irresponsibility and inefficiency made possible by the European postdemocracy and centralism. By returning to national interests, Trump challenges globalism and its main institutions and organizations (including the European Union) which have been for a long time opposing the idea of a nation state and the sovereignty of its politics.

The usually very loud and excessively self-assured exponents and advocates of the pre-Trump world are taken aback. However, their relative silence and inactivity won’t last for long. Their behaviour is different now, in the middle of April, than it used to be in last November. Especially here in Europe. We must quickly take advantage of the remaining chaos, confusion and shock of those who feel attacked by Trump. We must take advantage of the suddenly opened window of opportunity and start making resolute changes – resolute changes when we are in governments, and active preparations for elections when we are not. Such an opportunity will not return soon. This is a challenge for all Patriots.

In my recent address at a conference in Bratislava, I raised the question: “Can We Avoid Wasting the Unique Opportunity Offered to Us by Trump’s Presidency?”. I am sorry but I am not very optimistic in this regard:

1.   We are indecisive, uncourageous, and spoilt by years of inactivity and comfortable life;

2.   We are divided (both among countries and inside countries);

3.   We, as states, have already lost an important part of our sovereignty (by handing it over to Brussels by Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties);

4.   We don’t have a meaningful system of political parties. The ruling parties are not ideologically based. Their members are motivated more to be in power than to politically lead the country;

5.   All political parties have more or less embraced the main tenets of contemporary dominant ideologies of environmentalism, multiculturalism, genderism, progressivism, and globalism, which makes them almost indistinguishable. They are all green, even though they don’t have this adjective explicitly written in their titles.

I am afraid we may very easily waste the opportunity offered to us by Trump’s victory and by his in many respects revolutionary way of starting his term. We should be prepared for the desperate attempts of old political elites to return the world before Trump’s victory. I expect the intensification of efforts and activities from both the EU politicians and bureaucracy, as well as from long-serving politicians in individual European states.

It is up to us whether we passively accept this sad fate or whether we move forward. I wish the Patriots to continue moving their countries in the right direction. In this respect, Donald Trump is a great source of inspiration.

The task and the responsibility of Patriots is extraordinary and irreplaceable. They are – in my eyes – the party of common sense, as Donald Trump used this term in his inaugural address. I am convinced that common sense is and should be the basis of our way of thinking and of our way of behaving. I suppose the Patriots were elected not to preserve the status quo, but to remake it. I hope that most of you feel it the same way. I am glad to be here with you today.