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Notes for European Business Press Evening

English Pages, 28. 6. 2001

- good decision to have your meeting in Prague

- you came to a transition economy (and society) – in the last 11 years we went through a revolutionary period, very unique in history. We had to liberalize, deregulate and privatize the oppressive, regulated and state owned economy on an unprecedented scale and manner. In Western countries you use similar words but they mean something else;

- it was extremely important to describe, understand and correctly interpret both the whole period and its meaning and the individual measures and events in it because the transition meant a dramatic change of life for millions of citizens of the countries in this region – not always and not for everyone to the better;

- the task of describing both the ideas, motivations, interests and behaviour of politicians and all other participants in the transformation process and the reality of the countries was in your hands, in the hands of the media and because of that, your role and responsibility was enormous;

- I don´t intend to analyze anything this festive evening but the politicians have had the feeling that the media could (or should) have been more fair to them, but as a liberal economist I always prefer free trade to fair trade and I have to, therefore, defend free speech as compared to fair speech as well;

- as regards the future, the main issue in this region is the participation in the European integration process - the entry into EU. Again, this is a historic event which should be explained in a balanced way, with all its costs and benefits (on both sides). The entry into EU is not a panacea which would solve all the problems and we should not trivialize it. We have to look at it realistically, not to be trapped in a misleading ideology of Europeism;

- once again, I am glad you are here.

Václav Klaus, 28. 6. 2001