Europe is in the midst of the “most serious crisis since World War II” thanks to weak European Union (EU) elites letting in over a million migrants, former Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said.
In a robust speech at the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, Vaclav Klaus blamed Europe’s migrant crisis squarely on the defects of the EU’s “post-democratic” institutions and the “absurdity” of the bloc’s guiding ideology.
He also ridiculed the idea that the newly-arrived migrants would contribute to the continent’s economy by filling gaps in the labour market.
“The migrants we see in Europe these days do not come here as a labour force,” he said, adding that there is in fact no labour shortage in the first place.
“I am not aware of such shortages, I don’t see them. I am aware of the rigidities of European labour markets. We all know that there are 23 million unemployed in Europe… Any reasonably thinking person must admit that in absolute terms, the available labour force reservoir in Europe is sufficient.”
The so-called “demographic problem” of an ageing population and low birth rate, he added, did not come about by chance, but is the product of “ideologies” attacking the “traditional Christian concept of the family and of the natural differences between men and women.”
“Europe does not suffer from a lack of people,” he said. “All past generations living in Europe were much less numerous than the present one. Europe is and will remain the world´s most densely populated continent, there is no empty space waiting for settlement there.”
Turning his attention to the elites who allowed so many migrants to come to Europe last year, Mr Klaus said the crisis was the fault of “systemic defects of European policies, of the built-in defects of EU institutional arrangements, of the weakness of European political elites, and of the absurdity of their ideology as well as practical policies.”
Central European states, such as his native Czech Republic, have been particularly hard hit by the migrant crisis, as they feel their very identity is under threat.
These nations have a “rather sad history of struggle against attempts by large neighbours to conquer their territory and change its ethnic structure.”
They also remember “the history of hundreds of years of fighting against the violent expansion of Islam into Europe.”
“Wars against the Turks had been part of history in Central and Eastern Europe (and the Balkans) for centuries,” he said. “The current plans for quite illogical settling of Muslims in Europe, masterminded by Brussels, seem totally absurd in this context.”
The current migration project is therefore a “social experiment” that can only by justified by the “failed doctrine of multiculturalism”.
Europeans should not blame the migrants themselves for this, he said, but the EU-wide elites that allowed this to happen.
“The current policy of Germany and of the Brussels establishment proves to be a bigger threat to the future of Europe than the migrants themselves,” Mr Klaus said.