mr president since two thousand and four i have had many new colleagues from the accession countries here some of whom i am proud to call my friends
when we talk about the bad times which they lived under the thing that strikes me most is the way that they say that the really frightening thing living in the comecon states was not the absence of democracy nor the absence of property rights but the absence of a secure rule of law
if you were a troublesome critic of the regime you would not be put on trial
your life would just be made difficult your driving licence would mysteriously vanish in the post your children would not get their place in university you would be unable to find any but menial jobs
what worries me is that a similar double standard is beginning to pertain within our institutions
when václav klaus came here members hooted and gibbered and panted at him like so many stricken apes and no one was so much as told off
but when we protested in favour of a referendum fourteen of us were fined
goody-goody christian democrats can commit almost open fraud and get away with it but when an austrian eurosceptic photographed people signing in for a meeting which was not there he was fined thousands of euros for effectively filling in a form incorrectly
you might think that it is not my place to say this
i did not live under that system but václav klaus did and when he warns against going back to it i think we should listen
