By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Warsaw : Greater integration is cause of the European Union’s problems and is not the solution to the debt crisis, Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said.
The statement came in response to a proposal by European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso for the EU to boost its integration process to resolve the debt crisis.
“I principally, absolutely disagree with Barroso. I know that he is tragically wrong,” CTK news agency quoted the Czech president as saying Saturday at the summit of the Visegrad Four group, which also includes Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
The Czech president, whom many analysts describe as a Eurosceptic, said Friday that the Eurozone’s current problems were caused by the introduction of the common currency, when politics prevailed over economy, and economic laws were ignored.
“Europe’s current problems were caused by the accelerating process of more and more Europe. This is quite evident,” said Klaus, who is also a leading global financial expert and was finance minister 1989-1992.
“Barroso is not coming up with any other proposal than if more and more Europe has brought about the current problems, let us try more and even more. I think that this is a fatally wrong approach,” Klaus said.
He, however, said that he represented views of a minority among the summit’s participants. In his speech, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, took a different stance.
“Poland is saying with a great emphasis that we have to deepen European integration. Only in this way, we can get out of the crisis,” Komorowski said. “We should not forget that we also have to enlarge Europe.”