Czech celebrities appeal for British to remain in EU

World-renowned conductor Jiří Bělohlávek, supermodel Eva Herzigová, and former Olympic gymnast Věra Čáslavská are among more than 30 signatories of an open letter calling on UK citizens to vote to stay in the EU in the upcoming referendum. Initiated by former Czech ambassador to London Michael Žantovský, the letter says that the United Kingdom has a crucial balancing role in European politics and its exit from the EU would be a mistake. I spoke to Michael Žantovský, who is now head of the Václav Havel library, and I first asked him about his motivations behind the open letter.

Michael Žantovský, photo: Petr Novák, CC 3.0

“We wanted to express our sympathies and our concern for the people of the UK and our long-term relationship with them and we wished to make it clear what was the preferred outcome of the referendum in our mind.

"But we made it explicitly clear that this is a sovereign matter for the people of the UK to decide. We just wanted to express our feelings because the outcome of the referendum whatever it will be will inevitably affect the rest of Europe as well.”

So what are your arguments against Brexit?

“We feel it would be very unfortunate for both Europe and Britain if that happened because Britain played a crucial part in European history, it still plays a crucial part in European security and it still represents a very important bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic.

"And it is in our minds also a source of some intangible values, such as the legacy of democratic institutions, of pragmatic thinking in solving important problems, of entrepreneurial spirits and of the rule of law in its legal system.”

Why is the letter to the playwright Tom Stoppard?

“Well this is something that has to do with a long epistolary tradition in British culture and history. We deliberately followed up on text called Reflections on the Revolution in France written by Edmund Burke in 1790 to express his concerns about the events in France at the time and addressed to a gentleman in Paris.

Photo: European Commission

“Two hundred years later after the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, the British sociologist and political scientist Ralf Dahrendorf wrote his reflections on the revolutions in Europe in a letter addressed to a gentleman in Warsaw.

“So we addressed our reflections to Tom Stoppard, a gentleman in Dorset, but also an important person in the Czech-British relations, because he was born in Czechoslovakia before WW II and Tom Stoppard during the times of communist oppression took a very vocal stand on behalf of Czech democratic opposition and on behalf of human rights in Czechoslovakia and other countries of the Soviet Bloc.”