The Influence of Václav Klaus on Czech Public Opinion Regarding the European Union

Authors

  • Daniel E. Miller University of West Florida

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cbp.2017.219

Abstract

While president of the Czech Republic between 2003 and 2013, Václav Klaus, an outspoken critic of the European Union, employed speeches, interviews, and writings as a means of discrediting the EU in the eyes of Czech citizens.  The author used opinion polls from Eurobarometer and the Public Opinion Research Center (CVVM) of the Czech Academy of Sciences to establish the correlation between Klaus’s popularity and Euroskepticism.  In the early years of Klaus’s presidency, scepticism about the EU among Czechs grew, and between 2006 and 2010, there was a strong correlation between Klaus’s popularity and Czech Euroskepticism.  As Klaus’s popularity waned during his last years in office, Czech confidence in the EU began to rise.  This study not only helps to explain some bases of Czech Euroskepticism, but it also addresses the influence Czech presidents have in shaping public opinion in their country.

Author Biography

Daniel E. Miller, University of West Florida

Daniel E. Miller is a professor of history at the University of West Florida, where he has taught since 1990.  He completed his doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh in 1989 and in 1989-1990 was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.  He has made numerous research trips to East-Central Europe, particularly the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and he has traveled widely throughout Europe.  He is the author of Forging Political Compromise: Antonín Švehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party, 1918-1933 (University of Pittsburgh, 1999), which deals with agrarian politics and democracy in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars.  It appears in Czech translation as Antonín Švehla mistr kompromisu (Argo, 2001).  He also co-edited, with two other historians, K úloze a významu agrárního hnutí v českých a československých dějinách (Charles University, 2001).  Dr. Miller also has published a dozen articles and chapters related to Slovak and Czech agricultural politics, democracy in the Czechoslovak First Republic, and other topics both in Czech and in English.

References

References appear in the endnotes.

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Published

2017-10-30

Issue

No. 2503 (2017): The Influence of Václav Klaus on Czech Public Opinion Regarding the European Union

Section

Articles

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