Klaus: Euro Plus Pact limits national sovereignty

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The EU summit that took place last week in Brussels brought in “another radical decrease of the sovereignty of EU member states,” according to Czech President Václav Klaus.

Václav Klaus, a long-time opponent of the deepening of the European integration, voiced this criticism in an article published by Právo, a Czech left-leaning daily.

The so-called Euro Plus Pact, the outcome of the latest EU summit which nonetheless failed to impress markets, is designed to increase the competitiveness of EU member states. The countries that will join the pact will have the sustainability of their wage costs and pension systems observed by the EU. However, according to analysts, much more has to be done to solve the euro crisis.

The Czech Republic is one of the four EU countries that do not want to join the new pact. The others are the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Hungary.

“The stance of PM Petr Nečas (if only it were the stance of all the government) that we are not joining the Euro Plus Pact yet, is definitely correct, and we should support him in it. And above all, we should finally decide on what form of the European integration we would like to have, so that every future Czech negotiator can have a clear position. We should dare to say that we do not even want to join the European monetary union,” Klaus wrote in Právo.

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Before the summit, PM Nečas said that it was unacceptable for the Czech government that the final shape of the pact was discussed without the Czech Republic.

“We were not invited to (discuss) this final form of the Euro Plus Pact, it was presented to us in the ‘take it or leave it’ fashion. It is possible that some member state accept this attitude, but we do not want to accept it also for this reason,” said Nečas.

However, the PM did not rule out the possibility that the Czech Republic joins the pact in the future.

Against the current

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Václav Klaus is well known for his controversial opinions, above all on the European integration and the global warming issue, which have sometimes prevented him from being invited to some high-level events.

Klaus also opposes the intervention in Libya, and criticized his predecessor Václav Havel who expressed his support for the military action.

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