Don't forget EU triumphs says former Slovakia PM

The European Union faces grave problems, problems to which solutions are urgently needed. But that shouldn’t make us forget the reasons that the European community was formed and its genuine accomplishments.

Iveta Radičová speaking in 2010. 

That was the message of Iveta Radičová, former prime minister of Slovakia, speaking yesterday to an audience at the University of Alberta. She was in Edmonton on a visit organized by the Wirth Insitute for Austrian and Central European Studies.
A sociologist by training, Radičová was appointed a professor of sociology at Comenius University in Bratislava and founded the Centre for Analysis of Social Policy, one of Slovakia's first NGOs.
Radičová began her political career in 1990 as a member of People Against Violence.  After being defeated in Slovakia's 2009 presidential campaign, in June of the following year she became the country's prime minister at the head of a centre-right coalition.
In October 2011 her government fell after losing a non-confidence motion and Radičová did not run in the subsequent election. Following a fellowship in Oxford University in 2013, she is now lecturing at Comenius University.
In her presentation Radičová pointed to the ongoing financial crisis, which cost Europe two trillion Euros between 2007 and 2010 and resulted in 23 million unemployed, and has provoked widespread protest across the continent.
Serious ongoing problems facing the European Union include relatively low education and skills levels among citizens, an information technology deficit, corruption, and the need for improved financial regulation structural reform of the community. 

There was criticism in 2012 when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union at a time of deep and widespread crisis,” Radičová noted.

“For what, the Nobel Prize?” she said. "At a time when there are protests in the streets, dissatisfied citizens, deficits and debt. For what, the Nobel Prize?”

Quoting reaction to that criticism by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, Radičová said there are actually at least three good reasons for the prize: peace, democracy and welfare states.

“Don’t forget that the major reason for unification was the experience of the Second World War and trying to keep the peace on this continent," she stated, adding as an aside, “I hope we will have a chance to keep the peace on our own border with Ukraine.”

Just 40 years ago there were dictatorships in Southern Europe, 25 years ago in the Eastern European states that are now part of the EU.
“Democracy is a condition for success. We are trying to get our countries to become more participatory citizens”

The expansion of social benefits provided by states to their citizens has also been a major achievement of the EU.

“Human dignity is the main aim of all our efforts,” Radičová said. "It's said the present economic crisis is because the welfare state is too expensive. The opposite is that we can survive the crisis because of the welfare state.”

Improving education systems in the EU is a critical goal, she said.

“Education is the only way to get out of these problems.”