* Tallinn - Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who is on an official visit to Estonia these days, criticised the EU centralisation and proposed that the Union´s integration return to the model of intergovernmental cooperation and open market in his speech at the University of Technology in Tallinn today.
Klaus said he rejects EU unification from above and the creation of "supranationalism."
He noted he is convinced that the harmonisation of EU decision-making had gone further than necessary, reasonable and economically advantageous.
Out of the 22,000 laws that the EU has passed so far, 12,000 were approved between 1998 and 2005 and 10,000 from 1957 to 1997, Klaus recalled.
The role of the EU member states and the national parliaments has radically diminished, Klaus stressed.
He said that the EU is turning into a political union. Though one of the crucial steps of this process, the ratification of the European constitution, has failed, the creeping unification continues as if nothing happened, Klaus pointed out.
In the past, Klaus repeatedly stood up against the European constitution.
Klaus explained that his view of the free European integration process is different from many other opinions also over his experience from the communist era when the then Czechoslovakia had to follow the Soviet Union´s policy.
Thanks to this historical experience, a number of Estonians have probably a similar opinion about European integration, Klaus added.
However, the Estonian parliament ......
....... recently approved the draft European constitution. Estonia, which joined the EU and NATO in 2004, is the 15th EU member country to ratify the constitution in parliament.
The Czech Republic along with other countries, decided to interrupt the ratification process for some time after the constitution was rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands last year.
Klaus, accompanied by his wife Livia, paid a visit to Estonia within his four-day journey to the Baltic countries. On Thursday and Friday he will visit Lithuania.
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