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Václav Klaus for Italian journal Nazione Futura with Jacopo Ugolini: “Before European elections”

English Pages, 21. 5. 2024

1) Europe has been experiencing totally uncontrolled illegal immigration for more than a decade. The response of the European institutions has been the redistribution of migrants between countries. We know, however, that this is only a partial and damaging response for several European states. In your opinion, what should be the European Union's response to this problem? Can the Italian Mattei Plan, i.e. an investment plan in Africa, be the solution?

One should differentiate. We shouldn’t be afraid of individual migration, but of mass migration. Not to differentiate these two fundamentally different phenomena is a conceptual mistake. Individual migration is spontaneous and voluntary. Mass migration is organized both on its “supply” and “demand” sides.

We shouldn’t concentrate on illegal migration. Mass migration, both legal and illegal, is the problem which must be terminated. It destabilizes all nation states, their cohesion, their culture, their traditions, their mode of living together.

Migration is a problem for individual nation states, not for an undefined geographical entity called Europe. Any redistribution, masterminded by the democratically insufficiently backed European Union (and its institutions) should be considered absolutely unacceptable.

To promote an investment plan for Africa is a wishful thinking. The only meaningful solution is to stop the extremely generous European social system, its welfare state.

2) The demonstrations we have seen in recent years in some European countries, for example in France, where hordes of young second-generation immigrants storm the streets of French cities, are proof of a failed multiculturalism that only creates ethnic divisions within European society. The Left, not understanding this problem, believes that the only solution is to increase the number of immigrants from non-European countries. How did we get to the point where young immigrants are rebelling against European institutions and also against our culture? What solutions should European conservatives bring to this problem?

The behaviour of second-generation immigrants in many European countries proves the irrationality of accepting the idea of mass-migration. An individual migrant would never allow himself to do what the hordes of migrants are doing these days. Your question – when mentioning “failed” multiculturalism – suggests that there can be a non-failed multiculturalism. I disagree. Multiculturalism is in its substance a wrong and dangerous, very leftist collectivistic and anticonservative doctrine. The only solution is to say – loudly and unequivocally – NO to mass migration. The infamous slogan of Angela Merkel “wir schaffen das” must be reversed. Let‘s enjoy a multicultural world, but basically monocultural political entities, nation states.

3) In recent months, farmers have been at the centre of protests against the European Union. Already in the Netherlands months ago, the farmers' party greatly – BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB - increased its support among the population. The protests of the agricultural world are nothing new on European soil. What do you think they represent? What significance do they have? Are they a demonstration of the failure of the environmental policies promoted by the European Union?

Agriculture in Europe is a sector which reminds us, who lived for long decades in an irrational communist system, the old centrally planned economy, its suppression of markets, its manipulation with prices, its dependence on subsidies and on widespread redistribution. Such a system is totally wrong and inefficient but in Western Europe already “built-in” and taken for granted. Therefore, any attempt to change CAP (Common Agriculture Policy) faces a strong resistance.

Another thing is the failure of EU governments to implement a rational agricultural policy. “Rational” policy would be, however, inevitably incompatible with the – these days dominant – concept called Green Deal. Green Deal asks – among other things – for the reduction of agricultural output. In this respect I am fully on the side of protesting farmers. The green way of thinking must be radically opposed.