Wealth & Money Quote by Vaclav Klaus

Klaus is threading a needle that every post-communist reformer recognized: the state can’t be dismantled in one heroic gesture, but it can be made to lose its monopoly by changing the rules of the game. The opening concession - “not yet on the agenda” - is less an economic claim than a political survival tactic. He signals to wary colleagues (and a public still dependent on state employers) that he won’t detonate the existing order overnight. Then he pivots to the real move: redefine legitimacy. “Equal footing” sounds technocratic, even fair-minded, but it’s a loaded phrase in a system built on unequal rights. If private, cooperative, and foreign capital are allowed to compete under the same legal protections, state firms stop being the default winner.

The subtext is strategic gradualism with an ideological end-point. Klaus is speaking the language of inevitability: privatization may be postponed, but competition is presented as something that “must” happen “immediately.” That immediacy matters. In early 1990s Czechoslovakia (and soon the Czech Republic), the argument wasn’t just about efficiency; it was about irreversibility. Market competition is a one-way door: once non-state ownership has secure standing, political forces that want to restore a command economy have to fight uphill against new stakeholders, new contracts, and new expectations.

He also smuggles in a moral claim: state firms don’t deserve protection; they deserve to prove themselves. “Let…compete” is both a promise of freedom and a warning that the old guarantees are ending, whether the word “privatization” is spoken yet or not.