We Won

Pete du Pont asks if the young Eastern European democracies will have their economies smothered in the crib by the EU.

The Czech Republic survived four decades of communism. Now it’s facing a different kind of centralizing power, the European Union. Vaclav Klaus, a former and perhaps future prime minister of the Czech Republic, explains the dilemma now facing his country. The Czechs built a free society with a functioning market economy within a decade of the Berlin Wall’s collapse–a commendable feat, but one that is not yet complete. Now the nation is about to join a European Union that, Mr. Klaus says, is no longer dedicated to “removing barriers to the free movement of people, goods, money and ideas.” Instead the EU seeks to create a “supranational European state aiming at the centralization of power in Brussels and the elimination of European nation states.”

The Czechs got sold out twice in the 20th Century. Once to Hitler and once to Stalin. Are we really going to encourage them to sell themselves to Brussels in exchange for some agricultural subsidies?

Here