Ambassador Ernst Sucharipa, Director, Diplomatic Academy, Vienna, Austria

We are very proud to offer our facilities for this interesting and timely conference. Let me of course thank the organisers Ministers Lanc and Lacina and Mr. Stania from the International Institute for Peace and welcome our panellists, all of whom are well known experts and/or politicians in their respective fields.  I am sure all of us are looking forward very much to their contribution. I said it is a timely symposium and let me just justify why I am saying timely.

While I was spending some time over the weekend trying to find out what I should say at the beginning of the symposium a little contribution fell in my hands written by Jacques Rupnik who I'm sure all of you know and I think he had a better contribution to make than I could, so I am just going to quote Jacques Rupnik on the topic and you'll find out why, why is it timely: Because the debate between the Anglo-Saxon model of unrestrained, free market forces and the continental welfare model is important at the current stage of European integration, where will the central European newcomers to the European Union fit in this important debate? And that is where Jacques Rupnik comes in and I quote: "Regardless of the merits of the argument it seems clear that the prime inspiration for the economic reforms in central Europe--particularly in the first half of the 1990s in Poland under Balcerovic and in the Czech Republic under Vaclav Klaus, then later in Estonia-- was mainly the free market model. After half a century of state socialism, considered as bankrupt, it seemed more tempting to turn to economic liberalism as a transition strategy rather than to the social democratic welfare state model. The contrast between rapid growth in the United States and Britain and stagnation with over 10% unemployment in continental Europe in the early 90s only reinforced the Central Europeans appeal of the 'shock therapy approach.'" On the other hand, and this is of course the reason why I'm quoting Jacques Rupnik, he continues: "although the so-called European model was not the inspiration, the practise in most of Central Europe after a decade of transition is still much closer to it, much closer than to the Chicago School of laissez-faire capitalism. Vaclav Klaus´ policies were the most obvious illustration of the contrast between borrowed theories and domestic realities.

The fear of central Europeans getting out of sync with the mainstream European consensus of liberalism with a social democratic face are vastly exaggerated. On the whole they share the same apprehension or expectations towards the globalisation process as the mainstream European Union members." (end of quote) Thus I think Jacques Rubnik indeed has very ably encapsulated the important issues that we will be discussing today and in this spirit I am sure we will have a most interesting debate.