Speaking at the Journalist House on the topic "Europe after the double 'no' to the European Constitution", Klaus, often called a Euro-skeptic, an attribute he refuses, said he advocated a Europe of inclusion, whose member Croatia too should become.
Klaus said he had always answered positively to the most frequent question posed by Croatian officials and media during his ongoing visit to Zagreb - the issue of Croatia's EU membership. We support European integration, a Europe without unnecessary barriers, a Europe which is inclusive and not exclusive, he added.
Asked by a State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, Marija Pejcinovic Buric, to name three arguments in favour of Croatia's membership in the EU, as imperfect as it was at the moment, Klaus said Croatia would definitely benefit from EU membership.
This means joining an EU without barriers, he said. The other reason is that post-communist countries like the Czech Republic and Croatia cannot afford the luxury of staying outside of the EU like Norway or Switzerland, he added.
Good guys are inside, and bad ones outside, he said speaking figuratively, adding that if Croatia chose to stay outside, it would be considered a friend of autocratic Belarus President Aleksander Lukashenko.
An economist by profession, the Czech president spoke critically of the EU, saying that in his country too he had regularly called for thoroughly analysing the advantages and disadvantages of EU membership through three aspects: political, economic and international.
Speaking about the disadvantages, Klaus particularly warned about the dissatisfactory work of European institutions.
We are not the only ones making decisions, they are made in remote cities, in Brussels, where our voices are hardly heard, he said.
He also spoke critically of Euro-centralism, bureaucracy, the great rift between ordinary people and political elites, the huge costs of legislative adjustment and unification, standardisation, etc.
After the failure of the referendums on the EU Constitution in the Netherlands and France, time has come to consider where the EU is going, Klaus said concluding that the EU was a reality but that the European continent had still not reached the end of history and that as a Euro-optimist he was confident that everything could change for the better.
Klaus warned that European nationalism must not be built as a category that would replace the nationalism of individual member-states and urged member-states to make decisions in the common interest and to decide on almost all important issues by consensus.