Václav Klaus (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslaf ˈklaus]; born 19 June 1941 in Prague) is the second President of the Czech Republic (since 2003) and a former Prime Minister (1992–1997).
An economist, Klaus was the principal co-founder of the Civic Democratic Party, the Czech Republic's largest center-right political party. Klaus is a eurosceptic, but he reluctantly endorsed the Lisbon treaty as President of his country. He has been called the "Marg...
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Václav Klaus (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslaf ˈklaus]; born 19 June 1941 in Prague) is the second President of the Czech Republic (since 2003) and a former Prime Minister (1992–1997).
An economist, Klaus was the principal co-founder of the Civic Democratic Party, the Czech Republic's largest center-right political party. Klaus is a eurosceptic, but he reluctantly endorsed the Lisbon treaty as President of his country. He has been called the "Margaret Thatcher of Central Europe".
Klaus was born in Prague during the Nazi occupation, and grew up in the large (up to 1948 middle-class) Vinohrady neighborhood. He studied what was then called "economics of foreign trade" and graduated from the University of Economics, Prague in 1963. He also spent some time at universities in Italy (1966) and at Cornell University in the United States in 1969.
He then pursued a postgraduate academic career at the State Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which he was forced to...
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