Euro-Parliament is a Soviet-dictatorship says Czech president

Czech president Václav Klaus' formal speech at the usually so sedate European Parliament in Brussels raised so many hackles among the socialists that dozens walked out in protest - proving Klaus' claim that the EP brooked no opposite viewpoints.

There was a great deal of booing and cheering when the socialist faction walked out demonstratively in the middle of Klaus' speech. (also see video above for the viewpoint of a British Euro-sceptic parliamentarian). "We don't have to allow ourselves to be insulted, not even by a head of state,' fumed Dutch labour party Euro-parliamentarian Thijs Berman. "This isn't the Soviet Union, we are elected officials, and a democracy'. However while the socialists walked out, many others were also cheering him - there are many factions such as the Irish Libertas faction inside the European Parliament who, like Klaus, are adamantly refusing to sign the Lisbon Treaty. The row therefore was not exactly unexpected. Klaus' euro scepticism has in fact, defined his entire presidency. He is constantly warning that Czech sovereignty was severely compromised when it joined the European Union. In 2005, he called for the EU to be scrapped altogether and be replaced by a free-trade area he refers to as the 'Organisation of European States." That's actually how the EU actually started shortly after WWII to form a financial alliance between countries which had been left totally destroyed by war, i.e. Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. It was called the Benelux. Its original founders had only seen it as a financial cooperation pact with one centralised monetary unit -- and had never intended for it to grow into the current all-encompassing political entity ruling all the affairs of 27 European States, as is now being planned under the controversial Lisbon Treaty. With the European Parliamentary elections taking place from 4 June to 7 June 2009 the EP had wanted the Libson Treaty ratified by all 27 member states by January 1 this year. However this has still not been done: this week, the Czech Lower House voted in favour of it, but the country's president, Klaus, says he refuses to sign it. The treaty will not apply until it is ratified by each of the EU’s 27 members'elected president see EU undermines freedom - Klaus: Klaus - who is recognised as an eminent and honoured elderly statesman throughout Europe and the Balkan states -- has repeatedly attacked the EU as 'undermining freedom'. In 2005 he told a group of visiting US politicians that the EU was a 'failed and bankrupt entity'. In October 2008 he said that the EU was 'controlled by big powers just as they controlled Europe in 1938.." In November 2008 while on a state visit to member-state Ireland, he held a joint press conference with Declan Ganley, head of Libertas, which had successfully campaigned for a "No" vote in the referendum the Lisbon Treaty. The Dutch also voted No in this referendum, but it's premier has signed it anyway. On December 5, 2008, he had a very bizarre public confrontation with the members of the conference of Presidents of the European Parliament, prior to the Czech Republic's start of the one-year-presidency of the European Union, which started yesterday. The chairman of the Greens coalition, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, had on that occasion, presented Klaus with a European flag - and told Klaus publicly 'that he did not care about Klaus' opinions in regard to his opposition to the Lisbon Treaty.' And yesterday, at the start of the Chech republic's one-year EP-presidency, Klaus caused yet another row by once again comparing the EU with the Soviet Union and telling the assembly that they were undemocratic. He said in his speech that the EP also did not tolerate any 'criticism of the EP. "Anyone with a different opinion to the EP's , is immediately branded as the enemy of European integration,' he said. He said in his speech that the political power must be returned to the European states; and that they individual nation-states must retain their veto-rights. Currently he's battling to stop the Czech crown from being replaced by the Euro, which he says will destroy his country financially. He criticized the decision-making system of the EU as "different from classic parliamentary democracy". He pleaded for a greater shift of competencies to EU countries. "Are you really convinced that everything you decide in this hall must be decided here and not on the level of the member states?" he asked. Mr Klaus said the Lisbon Treaty would worsen the EU's democratic deficit, and questioned the role of the EP. Responding to his critical speech, EP President Hans-Gert Pöttering described Mr Klaus's views as "an expression of the diversity in Europe". He also pointed out that "in a democracy it's the view of the majority that counts". "Without the EP, he also warned, Europe would be in the hands of bureaucrats." Mr Pöttering also reminded Mr Klaus that, for all his criticism, he owed his freedom to speak this way to the fact that "we live in European democracy where everyone can express his or her own opinion," – something which had not always been the case in the parliaments of the European continent. also see