Václav Klaus served as Finance Minister of Czechoslovakia after the fall of the communist regime, then as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 1992 to 1997, where he oversaw the transition to a market economy. He went on to serve as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies before being elected President of the Republic, an office he held from 2003 to 2013.
On Wednesday 16 September, the President of the European Commission delivered the so-called State of the Union address in Brussels [Translator’s note: the address was delivered in Strasbourg]. The text and the formulations used surpass anything we have known in the past. Two things must, however, be said at the outset:
Mrs Leyen constantly confuses the words European Union and Europe. Europe is a continent; the European Union is an organisation created by people. In the same way, America is a continent and the United States of America one of the states on that continent. This is the permanent stance of Brussels officials and ideologues, but we cannot accept it. Even the exclamations at the end, “Es lebe Europa. Long live Europe”, are laughable. Europe is not a living being, so it cannot “live”. It can exist.
Mrs Leyen considers the challenges of today’s world to be exceptional, but the sentence that in this world “Europe has chosen to forge its own path” presupposes that Europe decides. It does not. Decisions are made on Europe’s behalf, through the mouth of Mrs von der Leyen. The phrase “Europe is there for Europeans” means that Europe stands above Europeans. That makes no sense.
Mrs Leyen acts as if she were starting something new. As if there were no past. As if she had not been running the European Commission since 2019. So when the highest European official says that the European Union is being “stifled” by bureaucracy [Translator’s note: this word does not appear in the English text of the address, which speaks of the administrative burden “slowing down business and SMEs”], that is nothing but an absence of self-reflection.
The speech contains a number of utterly indefensible formulations. In September 2026, “kickstarting Europe’s economy is our number one priority”. What does that mean? What does Mrs Leyen want to kickstart? Are we at some crisis point in the business cycle? Is there a crisis in Europe? Nothing of the kind is true. She says energy prices are “structurally too high”. As a professor of economics, I must say that I do not know the expression structurally high prices. Prices are either high or low. And if they rise rapidly, something causes it. According to her, “Russia cut off the gas”. There is nothing structural about that. It was we ourselves who cut ourselves off from Russian gas supplies. And it is logical that we are now bearing the cost of that step. If Mrs Leyen thinks we will solve the matter by setting up yet another bureaucratic body, “a new European Corporation on Critical Raw Materials”, that is another childish dream.
Mrs Leyen is immensely green. This summer was exceptionally warm, but there is no point in saying that “this summer was the summer of truth”. And at the same time threatening that this year’s summer months will in future be “the coolest” in history. Her bureaucratic proposals for solutions are always the same, the stuff of officialdom. We will “set up a Climate Insurance Alliance”. She promises to “put forward a new European Water initiative”. Bold indeed is the statement that “there can be no repeat of this summer”.
“AI is fast becoming a foundational layer for our economy and security.” In English, Mrs Leyen used the word “layer”. Did she really mean layer? Or what? Once again, a speech will bear anything, but is artificial intelligence a layer of the economy? And a layer of security? One of her advisers ought to advise her.
We need to ensure the protection of our security. But what does the statement “we need to stay in the race” mean? What race is this? Who with whom? Against whom? And for what? And if it is a race, were we not in it until now? What has changed? We must also “give workers a fair chance”. This is why she proposes “our Quality Jobs Act”. That already outdoes the resolutions of the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party.
In Europe, “some people even want to backslide on women’s rights. To send us back to an age in which women were second-class citizens.” And Mrs Leyen adds: “We will defend our rights.” Does she merely say it, or does she actually believe it?
A complete novelty is her sentence that we should work “on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU”. Those of us who have dealt with the European Union for decades know that associate membership of the EU does not exist. That it was mentioned in a 2018 report of the European Commission to the European Parliament as some possible future change to the current treaties is something else entirely. But Mrs Leyen already wants – in an entirely anti-American way – to “make the Arctic a flagship joint project” with Canada. President Trump’s immediate reaction was that this was a ridiculous and hostile idea, and that the US would respond by imposing very high tariffs, or even by cutting off trade with the EU. That is a logical reaction on his part.
I consider the key passage to be Mrs Leyen’s question: “do we let our democracies be undermined by the lackeys and puppets of authoritarians?” This too is a statement worthy of the former Moscow Politburo. Lackeys and puppets are words that those of us who lived through it remember from the communist era. Fortunately, not since. And yet Mrs Leyen uses them, and for that reason wants to establish – with nothing but European taxpayers’ money – a “Centre for Democratic Resilience”. That is truly unbelievable.
Many more of these absurd statements could be quoted. And yet Mrs Leyen wants to “once again take charge of our future”. We should not let her. It is enough to look at the present she herself has helped to create for us.
This op-ed was first published in Czech on 18 September 2026 in the daily Mladá fronta DNES. It is reproduced here in our own translation, with the author’s permission.