Let me first say that it is a great honor for me to be here at your conference with you and to share experience of transition with you. I know well enough that every experience of this kind is very specific. I remember the days when parachuted experts from all over the western world were daily guests at the offices of newspaper in Prague I used to work for. And as well I remember remarks of my colleagues � and my own, too, of course - about discovering America second time as we used to call some of their remarks or suggestions. And how often we repeated the classical observation of Johan Wolfgang Goethe: that gray is all theory and green is the tree of life. So tolerate me if I try to talk less theoretically and more about the observations of the tree of life. It has been 16 months since the last and greatest enlargement of European Union happened. Not a long time, but long enough for the greatest crisis of EU to happen � the greatest crisis maybe since its very beginning and certainly since the previous enlargement in 1995. A notion of common Europe has lost a lot of its appeal not only in old fifteen member states but also in the new ones. Euroskepticism, a concept used to be connected just with a part of British conservative scene and xenophobic extremists on the continent found it's new allies. And the reason has not surely been just high number of the new countries in the club or the fact that they are not the strongest economies we can imagine. If it comes to the old member states, we can hear about some logical reasons why integrated Europe is not as attractive as it used to be. At first, there are strong differences between political and economical climate of the first decades of integration and present Europe, between Europe in bipolar world and in the unilateral one. Cohesion of Western Europe had been built in an era of bipolarity mostly on the sense of danger. First it was an inner danger, ghosts of history. Memory of the war was too fresh at that time and the common goal was to prevent the repetition of the era between two world wars and future wave of armament and antagonisms. And then the second peril emerged from the East: atomic power of the Soviet Union plus its satellites. It was more than enough to boost the sense of cohesion and solidarity. But it is gone nowadays and even if it was replaced at least in part by perils of militant Islam, it is not yet so strong and intensive enough to strengthen the integration drive. The internal policy of the old member states has become an other reason of dropping of the popularity of European Union. So called Brussels bureaucracy has often been used as a clich� and all the players on domestic political scenes have been blaming most of difficult issues on it. The simplest way how to explain the rise of prices was introducing of Euro as currency, for example. And soon after the former Soviet bloc countries opened their economies another reason surfaced: capital started to flow where less expensive but qualified labor force was. I realized how many goods with western trade mark are in fact produced in the East just when I was packing my suitcase for this trip: believe me, there is a lot of them. But why is European Union at present form loosing its appeal even in the East, in the new member states that used to be part of Soviet sphere. Looking for an answer we also have to go further to history than to the 1. May of 2004. It is not just the result of the first months of experience with full membership or with the Constitution crisis. In fact, the Constitutional Treaty crisis did not play the significant role in the new states yet. According to a study of a Czech sociologist Jan Keller on the 15 years of development of the Czech Republic, if we are looking for the root of certain disenchantment towards European integration process, we have to go back to the end of so called short XX. century, the November 1989, when totalitarism finally collapsed. This was the time of great expectation which have not been fulfilled not only because they were not pursued enough, but because they were not real. Even if Keller speaks about the Czech society, his findings could be applied to the whole Central Europe and to the great extent to the Baltic States and East European countries as well. At first Keller notes what we often forget: people were striving not only for freedom, but also for a consumer society, which they knew just vicariously. European Union was a symbol and an ideal pattern of welfare state and still is, at least for a part of population. But in the turn of eighties and nineties it started to be obvious that the European model of welfare state was not only endangered but that it also urgently needed radical changes and its role had to be weakened. European countries had more and more problems to keep their economical and consuming priorities, Keller notes. I only add that one of the sins of political and media elites in the countries in transition at that time was that they did not tell that loudly enough to the public and they let people dream on. The second illusion of those years was the notion of returning to the political system which existed before the Second World War. Both European integration and start of globalization were main reasons why this system could not be restored - and we are letting aside the progress of technology, especially in the information technology. Media and political parties are a different way nowadays. Parties are far more apart from the public and this gap gets smaller just once in four years in the election campaigns. And we can see that political parties are quite happy with it. Not so the public - but people react not with repulse but with passivity. The result is the drop in voter turnout. If more than 50 percent of eligible voters come, everybody is quite happy in the Czech Republic. The turnout of the elections to the European Parliament was slightly over 30 percent, the Senate election turnout is even lower - around 20 to 25 percent. One of the candidates who did not get elected remarked sarcastically that he did not mind since the turnout was in his constituency smaller than the number of people who watch local football teams plays really miserably. There are more and more people who are apart of the so called silent majority. And it is a question, what they say, when they start to speak. The third problem Keller mentions is sovereignty. The loss of sovereignty in a traditional sense was really painful for all of the new countries. Mostly they gained it just for the short times between the wars and then half of the century of imposed vassalage came. They got freedom back in 1989 or after the fall of Soviet Union and they were to restrict it, at least partially, again. Pro Europe oriented segment of elites and protagonists of civic society started to promote a notion of new European sovereignty, quite a lot of people, I am afraid, did not buy it. On the contrary, that was the argument which brought, at least somewhere, new supporters of nationalistic and xenophobic groupings. This argument was used also by part of the elites which wanted to keep their power without restriction to legitimate this attitude against the vision of greater European cooperation. BTW, one of the exponents of those elites is Czech president Mr. V�clav Klaus. His loudly presented Euroskeptical attitude is contrasting with proeuropean attitude of the Czech government and the Czech Republic has - because of this dichotomy a rather schizophrenic image. Sure, president can say he is consistent, he did not change his view after the collapse of French and Dutch referendums as some others did. He was Euroskeptical - or as he said Eurorealistic before it and we should not forget he refused to call upon the public to support the Czech referendum before the enlargement. But we may see that his public statements against the current format of the EU has been more intensive after the beginning of the crisis and he is in his speeches, mostly abroad, promoting connection as loose as possible, something similar to the free trade zone from Great Britain to Kazachstan. He refuses multiculturalism, speaks against NGOism, against civil society - as none of these came through a formal election process. He is against all unifying, harmonizing and centralizing trends. Of course, his vision of the new Europe does not need anything like European constitution. Let me quote the last paragraphs of his article published in Financial Times on the 30th August of this year under the title Why Europe must reject centralization: "The idea of building a "State of Europe" must be forgotten. Since we all are � I suppose � against the "national" nationalism, we should not start building "European" nationalism. We need a system of liberal democracy that requires authentic citizenship connected with the natural loyalty of people towards their own nation. We should create an Organization of European States, whose members will be individual states. It will be necessary to get rid of words such as "European citizenship". The membership must be motivated only by a common belief in the ability of the member states to act in some areas jointly, in the common interest. The mechanism of decision-making must be consensual, at least in all important matters. Everything else is secondary and, in many respects, follows from the primary delineation of the essence of European integration. However, this delineation must be resolved right now. The opportunity that emerged after the double rejection of the existing course of European integration will not repeat itself any time soon. Fortunately, his voice is unique and it is by many regarded as kind of extreme not only in Europe but also in the Czech Republic. But what we should note is that if we look at this kind of Euroskepticism more closely, we realize, that it often connects neo-liberal economists and politicians with left wing activists and protectionists of the labor market. For example, a lot of arguments of neo-liberal Vaclav Klaus are based on arguments of the Irish leftist professor Anthony Coughlan, whose basic goal is to protect Irish workers against competition from the East. But lets come back to our mainstream political debate. Petr Pithart, a long time president of the Czech Senate and one of the few dissidents still playing an important role in the Central European politics, also had to return in his thinking about the cause of the current crisis of Europe back to early 1990ies. In his lecture at Humboldt University in Berlin at the end of this June he came up with thesis that the roots of our current crisis are related to the fact that EU has not adapted itself to the conditions of the post-bipolar world. According to him, the EU in fact does not take the enlargement seriously. A laboratory-quality piece of evidence of that lies in the unification of Germany - the first enlargement of the EU to the East. It is not over yet. Many have not come to terms with it. Who knows how the vote would turn out if it would take place today. The unification runs on a much slower, more painful and expensive course than envisaged. All pessimistic forecasts have long been exceeded. Yet the Federal Republic of Germany seemed to have all means to deal with the problems of its new Lands. It had enough funds and human resources and a ready-made legal system to handle unification. Pitahrt says squotet: "I can't help thinking that we all - not only Western Germans or Europeans in the Union - have not yet understood fully, and therefore have not accepted, the unexpected implosion of the Soviet Bloc. The indirect challenge to the last EU enlargement, voiced through referendums in France and the Netherlands, is just a late consequence of this inadequate understanding." sEnd of quotet, to which one can just add after recent German elections that this is something what can explain the rise of electorate of post-communist New Left - even if it has zero coalition potential. And, on the other hand, it could be also the reason why so many Europeans in the EU 15 now see the accession of new 10 as a precipitated, risky step. This is why they are afraid of Polish plumber, Czech bus driver and Latvian programmer, why they talk about social dumping. Yes, our labor is cheaper and some more developed, richer countries are not willing to cope with it. In doing so, they cast doubt on the very pillars supporting the Union, on its fundamental freedoms. New members feel disappointed and offended. Their response is: well, they don't want us, so we won't intrude. It seems obvious that any next enlargement and any new deepening of integration of EU has to be well considered and - that is most important - properly discussed with public. It cannot happen against the will of the people who are supposed to vote on the document which is difficult just to read, not to mention understand it without special knowledge. The results could be disastrous. And the tests of our ability to learn a lesson from the current crisis are about to take place. The accession process with Turkey is to reveal many of the current problems of Europe: How about the unwillingness of Turkey to recognize the Republic of Cyprus?. It is a problem of Turkish and Islamic minorities in Europe? How about the threats of fundamental Islam and of terrorism? And we have to end an unfinished dispute on the war in Iraq and answer the question of the future borders of Union. And than there is the fundamental question: Is Europe able to overcome all of it and show its strength in solidarity again? Yes, we should not forget that the solidarity is a key moment of the European integration since the beginning. Let me again to quote from Petr Pithart's lecture in Berlin: "We want to be able to count on the solidarity that makes European integration a unique and respectable project. To do that, we always have to be clear where Europe begins and ends. We have to know where and when it may enlarge, and what values bind it together. Europeans should always have the clearest possible view of what they may gain from every enlargement - for example, in geopolitical terms, - and how much they will have to give up for it. Most importantly, they have to be sure they will be the ones making the decision, not only through the European Parliament, but also through national parliaments and perhaps even referendums. In a hazy Union whose shape and size is determined by super-state bodies, solidarity will evaporate and give way, quite understandably, to cautious, petty egoism. And then, though our words may want to reach the sky, we will fall on the ground, and the European project will break into pieces that no one will be able to put back together. sEnd of quote.t Being a journalist by profession I want to say at the end just briefly a few words about media, their state and role at present time from the experience of my country. In the first years after 1989 the development had been really positive, BTW thanks to help of the parachuted experts I mentioned at the beginning. Our first goal was to have media free of any influence of the government of political parties. We made it. The only daily published by a political party in our country is insignificant newspaper of the communist party which perhaps does not want to forget years gone. All the electronic media are out of governmental influence, being either public service media or commercial ones. The second goal was professional quality of media and introduction of standard western media codes. It went fast first years but the pace then gradually slowed down. I am afraid that Czech media, even if they operate in free European space are - from the point of view of quality - at a standstill. There are more causes to it. Form of ownership is one of the important, even if not the most important factors. With one exception all the Czech dailies, both national and regional, are in the foreign, mostly German, hands. All commercial TV networks are owned by foreign corporations and the same is true about the radio networks. The problem isn't in the political or content influence, which could be, regarding our common - Czech and German - history, a touchy point. It is in fact that the foreign owners are interested in Czech media just economically and what matters is only profit. They don't want to publish quality newspapers, to broadcast quality program. They want to satiate shareholders. The easiest way how to do it is tabloidisation, infotainment, celebrity mania. Both trouble and shame is that publishers and broadcasters who are produce quality media products in their own countries do not have the same goal abroad. They miss the control of their fellow citizens. And the quality of media is the field where EU has no chance to intervene. And it is none of its business by the way. So we are now facing a paradox: the best quality product of Czech media scene is Czech section of BBC. It sets standards for other media. But since the Czech Republic is stable and successful EU member state, and even BBC is supposed to cut its budget, the section will be probably closed down by the end of this year. So to end, I must admit that quality media are in Czech Republic as endangered species as some wild animals are. But unfortunately, there is just Greenpeace, not Greenpress. Thank you for your attention. Jaroslav Veis is journalist and counselor of President of Czech Republic

Jaroslav VEIS