The Czech Republic and the European Union
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11230%2F18%3A10392923" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11230/18:10392923 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.507" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.507</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.507" target="_blank" >10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.507</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
The Czech Republic and the European Union
Original language description
The collapse of communism in late 1989 released the Czechs to freely consider and shape the social and economic structures of their country. The diverse formulations of the contours that a democratic and market competitive Czech Republic should take were closely intertwined with the visions of Europe and the European Union. Two prominent postcommunist politicians, Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, offered two perspectives. While Václav Havel stressed the cultural, socially liberal anchoring represented by European democracy, Václav Klaus initially focused on Europe as a market-liberal economic model. By the time Václav Klaus replaced Václav Havel in the presidential office, Klaus shifted his European rhetoric from economic to sociocultural matters, opposing Europe as a limitation on Czech sovereignty. The discrete visions proposed by these statesmen are reflected in Czech public opinion, shaped between economic and sociocultural considerations. While Czech public opinion initially viewed the EU in economic terms, this changed around the time of the Czech Republic's accession to the Union in 2004. By the early 2000s Czechs started to view the EU rather as a sociocultural project. It was also around this time that public support for the Union starts to significantly decline. The European Union, as a multifaceted organization with an encompassing legal framework, has been both an inspiration and a scarecrow in Czech politics. While for Havel it has provided an imperfect but stable sociocultural expression of liberty and openness, for Klaus it was initially a symbol of free market economics, only to later become a much-opposed damper on Czech national independence. Klaus's economic view dominated public understanding of the EU in the 1990s; however, the 2000s have seen a shift as the EU comes to be understood as a value-based, socially liberalizing project. While this development coincides with Havel's vision of the EU, it, paradoxically, has led to increased public opposition to European integration.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
50601 - Political science
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2018
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
Oxford Research Encyclopedias of Politics
ISBN
978-0-19-022863-7
Number of pages of the result
23
Pages from-to
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Number of pages of the book
2500
Publisher name
Oxford University Press
Place of publication
Oxford
UT code for WoS chapter
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