President Klaus: Lisbon treaty will make EU less democratic

In an interview for the UK paper the Sunday Times, Czech President Václav Klaus said that the Lisbon treaty would make the European Union less democratic, it would make the decision-making process less transparent, and it would give more competences to Brussels at the expense of member states. Mr Klaus also denied having made a comparison between the European Union and the Soviet-era system in his address to the European Parliament last month; the president said the Czech experience with communism was valuable in that Czechs learnt that where there was no opposition and no tolerance to other points of view, there was is no freedom, either.