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Czechs vote overwhelmingly for EU

AFP - Prague

Czechs voted overwhelmingly in a two-day referendum for their formerly communist nation to join the European Union, becoming the seventh of 10 candidate states to say yes to the EU’s historic eastward expansion.

A total of 77.3 per cent of Czechs voted for EU membership, the Czech statistics office said, with 99.9 per cent of ballots counted.

Czech leaders greeted the results, a much higher yes percentage than had been predicted, as a historic final chapter in former Soviet satellites’ return to life alongside western Europe. “The yes is clear. No one can dispute it” the social democrat prime minister Mr Vladimir Spidla told reporters.

“For me, the second world war and the division of Europe has ended (with this vote),” making clear his feeling that the EU expansion scheme is all but accepted following pro-EU votes in other eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary The foreign minister Mr Cyril Svoboda said, “Czechs have proved that they are interested in the fate of the republic.” He said he was “very happy that after 10 years Czechs and Slovaks will live again in a common structure without borders,” referring to Slovakia which has also approved EU membership.

The referendum in the Czech Republic was the first in the nation that was created when former Soviet bloc state Czechoslavkia split apart into the Republic and Slovakia in 1993, four years after the so-called velvet revolution ended communist rule.