International Report: Czech Republic

Following the success of our first international report - Czech stockbroker and PhD candidate Pavel Ryska fills us in on what it's like to live in one of the most libertarian countries in Europe. We're a tad jealous!

CC:

Tell us a bit about libertarianism in the Czech Republic. Having experienced the worst of Communism do you think Czechs are more receptive to libertarian views?

Pavel:

The Communist experience is definitely a part of the story. Czechs always compare the new leftist "-isms" with communism and they find a lot of resemblance. As a result, they are more open to libertarian ideas than the current Western Europe. They are also more skeptical towards the ever-increasing centralization of the EU and fashionable environmentalism. But Czechs and libertarianism also have another special relationship which concerns the academic world and which is rather new. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, a group of free-market thinkers founded the Liberal Institute in Prague ("liberal" in the European sense of the word) and gave rise to a group of young economists and political scientists who embrace the free market and oppose government intervention. Their impact on public debates is bigger than in any other post-communist country.

CC:

Is Vaclav Klaus (current President of the Czech Republic with libertarian views) well liked?

PR:

Since 2003 when he was elected President for his first term, Vaclav Klaus has invariably led the popularity polls in the Czech Republic. And I should add that he has been popular despite the fact that he often expressed minority opinions: he warned against the euro when its adoption was supported by the majority of Czechs, he opposed the global-warming alarmism on the height of its popularity, he was almost the only one in Europe to have a dissenting opinion on the Russia-Georgia conflict in 2008, etc.

CC:

Did you hear the Australian Prime Minister refused to meet with Klaus, even though she meets with leaders of nations that commit human rights abuses?

PR:

The refusal of the Australian PM to meet with him was covered intensely by Czech media. The amusing part of the story is that by doing so, the Australian PM in fact confirmed what Vaclav Klaus says all the time: that the majority of today’s political leaders do not want free discussion and prefer to avoid debates and silence dissenters rather than to face their arguments. If the Australian PM came to the Czech Republic to give a series of lectures as Klaus did in Australia, I think Klaus would be happy to meet with her at the Prague Castle and listen to her opinions. It’s a pity.

CC:

What do you think of the TOP09 Party?

PR:

What led to the birth of the TOP09 party was the impression that the major right-wing party ODS (founded by Klaus in 1991 and led by him until 2002) was becoming increasingly corrupt and unprincipled under the new leaders and that the right-wing spectrum needed "fresh air". However, TOP09 has never had any ambition to be more right-wing, more consistent, more market-friendly. It only claims that it is "cleaner", that its people are incorruptible, that they have higher moral standards. I think this is completely fallacious. The only way how to fight corruption in the public sector is to take away its regulatory powers, to drastically downsize the government. The problem is the system, not the people in it. Neither ODS nor TOP09 wants to face this at the moment.

CC:

People say there is a lot of corruption in the Czech Republic, how are you addressing it?

PR:

There are many new parties and initiatives that call for more "transparency", stricter punishments, higher public control over government spending, etc., to fight corruption. But this is nothing new. There have been attempts to fight corruption by government after government, party after party in the past 10 years. Everything has failed and will fail again because they keep avoiding the biggest problem – the size of the government. As long as bureaucrats decide 40 % of the country’s GDP, as long as there are thousands of regulations that bureaucrats impose on firms and individuals, public-sector corruption will exist.

CC:

Czechs, on a whole, can be quite negative people. Do you think this is a product of Communism or just part of the national psyche?

PR:

I don’t think they are negative in the core, they are in fact quite happy people. But it’s true that they like to show a negative veil outwards, especially to people they don’t know. Communism boosted this as well, because it really was a dark period that completely demoralized the nation, cut off natural, positive bonds between people and only made them suspect one another. But it didn’t start with communism, it was here already before it. It’s hard to pinpoint when it started, but it might have something to do with the 300-years-long Austrian empire. Czechs could not escape from it and the only thing they could do – quite understandably – was to complain about it for centuries. Then it’s logical that it stayed in the way they speak. But I think it has been changing in the past 20 years. Czechs realize that they have made incredible progress since 1989, that they live in a beautiful and prosperous country and that they have nothing to be ashamed of. I feel the change in everyday life.

CC:

You’ve studied at Cambridge (in England), where do you think has more potential in terms of creating a free society?

PR:

England has a tremendous advantage in that it has always stayed away from the continental-European totalitarian movements. The English have their own form of law, they have their centuries-long principles that they never abandon, and this saves them from the revolutionary bloodsheds that marked continental Europe. I also think that England is now one of the most reasonable voices in the EU, showing healthy skepticism towards centralisation, unification and the federalist movement. On the other hand, paradoxically, England’s advantage is also its disadvantage. It has never had a first-hand experience with a leftist totalitarianism and therefore it is more prone to embrace dangerous doctrines that destroy human freedom like environmentalism. In this respect, the Czechs are more vigilant.