People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open dissidents who were being arrested were pursuing a common goal in different ways.

I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living (though not their own) and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries.

Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

EU didn't advance our [Eastern Europe] democracy by a single millimeter.

I don't think there is any global warming. I don't see the statistical data for that.

I was paid to read Western economic texts. In a way, the regime paid for their own undermining.

Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.

Czech Republic is an important part of central Europe. It's clear that we must participate in European integration. I am convinced that the Czech Republic - or, in the past, Czechoslovakia - would have been one of the founding members of the EU if it hadn't been for the communist takeover in 1948.

To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes having to teach Westerners about what the market really means.

Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

Common foreign policy is completely unnecessary. The various European countries have widely differing priorities, goals and prejudices. It would be wrong to force them all to follow the same course.

Environmentalism is a dangerous ideology endangering human freedom.

I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. That was the first public expression of what the new government wanted to do.

EU expansion is, unfortunately, continuing without a constitution, as a gradual process of standardization - and that's far more dangerous. It is very difficult to slow down this process, which is being pushed forward without significant public participation.