Miloš

Zeman

Prime Minister of the Czech Republic

Speech made to the Assembly

Monday, 26 April 1999

All speechesQuestions and answers

Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues and friends, it is sometimes useful for any prime minister to have in his pocket a written speech prepared by his advisers, but I think that words must come from the heart, not just from paper. That is why I apologise to the interpreters for complicating their work.

After forty years of living under a totalitarian system, but still with our deeply rooted cultural and political heritage, we are returning home. We are no newcomer. The European family is our old family. We, the Czech Republic, belong to that family. It is a wonderful feeling to be coming home.

I want to express my sincere gratitude and thanks to the Council of Europe for its help in re-establishing Czech democracy. Thank you so much for your assistance and advice.

New politicians from post-totalitarian states after reading a few textbooks are tempted to visit Europe and give lectures on market economy and political democracy. However, we must learn and gain experience from you.

Our experience may be important for you, too. It is the experience of a prisoner released from a concentration camp. You might say that there is no chance of a repetition of concentration camps. That is why your experience is not useful for us. We have experienced a totalitarian system. You might say that there is no risk of a repetition of any totalitarian system because of technological progress and improving economic performance, but, dear friends, there is the risk that just such technological progress and improving economic performance might provoke new, and possibly more sophisticated forms, of totalitarianism. That is our experience. We are sensitive – perhaps even over-sensitive – after forty years of communism, to emerging forms of totalitarianism. We are like a bird in a mine which signals a poisonous atmosphere. That is the problem of contemporary politics.

I understand that there are two European families – the Council of Europe and the European Union. Everybody speaks about the European Union because full membership is connected with some degree of economic performance. As a representative of an applicant country, I understand the necessity for full membership for the Czech Republic in the European Union. Nevertheless, that body, however important, is organised and integrated mainly on economic principles – on the principles of economic performance. I understand the Council of Europe to be an institution that is founded not on money, but on values – common European values such as solidarity, respect for human rights, social cohesion, political democracy, and so on. Such values have no army, no money, no financial resources. Nevertheless, they integrate our family.

On the feedback group, I fully understand that it is better, and feels more comfortable, to develop human rights on the basis of high economic performance, but social structure and the degree of political democracy and freedom are the most important factors in improving such performance.

One of the main European values is diversity – integration not unification. I do not envisage Europe and the Council of Europe as a melting pot; I do not envisage a society just of McDonalds. Indeed, the Prime Minister of Italy, Massimo D'Alema, told me that he has organised a body – the friends of slow food. Man cannot be reduced to only one dimension: homo economicus. The kitchen is also a part of our culture. That is why we cannot unify our cultures. We must instead enrich them. Some values cannot be measured by commercial criteria. What is the price of friendship? What is the price of life? What is the price of health? What is the price of human rights? All such things are based on long-term co-operation in the broad European family which the Council of Europe embodies. The Czech Republic has deep democratic traditions. As you know, it was called the island of democracy between the two world wars. Now it has an opportunity to participate in a family that is integrated on the basis of certain values and not only economic performance.

I shall touch on the painful problem of Kosovo, which is discussed so frequently. I have discussed it with your Secretary General. We talked, of course, of the Council of Europe's successes, but we talked too of its failures. According to the philosophy of falsification of Karl Popper – a study of our failures and mistakes – it might be beneficial to learn from our mistakes. The Secretary General told me that Kosovo is our main failure. We have not been able to prevent the war with the tool of democracy. We must form a new strategy, and not a short-term one, because the Council of Europe has no weapons or armies and, as far as I know, bud­ gets are strictly limited.

But, sub specie aetemitatis, our common task must be to prepare for the development of democratic, civil and military structures in a future Yugoslavia. Rather than substituting President Milosevic with Mr Draskovic, we must prepare and educate new political leaders. That must be the long-term strategy. The Council of Europe alone is responsible for providing that missing link.

Of course, individual factions will try to develop into political parties, but there is common ground between them: a democratic approach and the desire never to replicate the totalitarian system which is still in operation there. The Czech Republic is completely prepared to participate in that strategy.

I firmly hope that there will be gradual convergence of the two European families. We know that the European Union began as a free trade area, but now there are second and third pillars. The Czech Republic is happy to inform you that it has ratified many Council of Europe conventions, and not only those which have economic characteristics, such as those on local self­ government and the European Social Charter. We have joined the Social Development Fund because to be pro-European means to have respect for such conventions. We have also taken an initiative, which is orientated towards the competencies of the European Court of Human Rights, in order to observe and control the fulfilment of the conventions. I greatly hope that, in the long term, the Czech initiative will be accepted.

Deep in my heart I believe that the two European families will join. I am very grateful that we are both the old and the new member of your family. Thank you very much for your attention.

THE PRESIDENT

Thank you, Mr Zeman for your thoughtful, friendly speech. You heard the Assembly's response to it. I am deeply envious of your articulate fluency in a foreign language and the ability to speak without a text. I wish that I could do that.