As a man of principle and a firm believer in European unity, Vaclav Havel, the late Czech president, playwright and leader of the Velvet Revolution, expressed grave concern about the direction of the European project. Havel’s biographer, his former spokesman and currently Czech ambassador to the U.K. Michael Zantovsky, spoke at CEU Jan. 28 about Havel and the concerns he shares.
“As president, Havel deplored the spiritual barrenness of the European project,” Zantovsky said. “He was missing the spiritual, the moral, the emotional dimension.”
The European Union was founded on a grand set of values, from human rights to freedom of speech, rule of law to protection of minorities, all of which are entrenched in treaties and policies, but these values don’t always appear to be given priority in decision-making, Zantovsky said. The biggest challenge for the EU today is to define a European identity, to articulate European responsibility and the meaning of European integration in the world, he said.
Zantovsky, whose Havel: A Life was published in 2014 by Grove Press, recalled Havel’s “determination to preserve his identity in its entirety, not package it and sell it.”
This conviction made him a brave opponent of the communist regime, a leader, and a moral icon, but left him ill-equipped for the practice of politics or the use of power, Zantovsky said. Nevertheless, he established the Czech Republic as a successful democracy and brought it into NATO and the European Union.
“He was one of the most respected statesmen of his era,” Zantovsky said. “Nevermind what kind of politician he was.”
CEU President and Rector John Shattuck, who was U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic in 1998-2000, during Havel’s presidency, also recalled Havel with fondness and respect.
“This is a kind of homecoming for Vaclav Havel, one of the founders of Central European University, who gave us much our founding mission,” Shattuck said. “It is out of that vision that we are who we are today.”
Havel was presented with the CEU Open Society Prize in 1999 for his unparalleled contribution to the transformation that took place in Eastern Europe and brought freedom, democracy and open society to the region.
Shattuck quoted Havel, who in his acceptance speech upon receiving the award, said
“An Open Society - that is, a society of free human beings exercising free association, a society that does not defer to the dictate of any ideology or any particular interpretation of history and supposed historical laws but solely to the imperative of human judgment and of the basic moral principles - requires an open human being with an open mind.”





