Václav Klaus (born 19 June 1941) is a Czech economist and politician who served as the second president of the Czech Republic from 2003 to 2013. From July 1992 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in January 1993, he served as the second and last prime minister of the Czech Republic while it was a federal subject of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, and then as the first prime minister of the newly independent Czech Republic from 1993 to 1998. During the Communist era, Klaus worked as a bank clerk and forecaster. After the fall of Communism in November 1989, he became the Minister of Finance in the "government of national unity". In 1991, Klaus was the principal co-founder of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS). He was prime minister from 1992 to 1998, and from January to February 1993 he held certain powers of the Presidency. His government fell in the autumn of 1997; after the elections in the spring of 1998, he became the president of the Chamber of Deputies (1998–2002). After ODS lost the parliamentary elections of 2002, he withdrew from politics briefly, before being elected President of the Czech Republic in February 2003. He was re-elected in 2008 for a second five-year term. His presidency was marked by many controversies over his strong opinions on issues ranging from global warming denial to Euroscepticism, and a wide-ranging amnesty declared in his last months of office, triggering his indictment by the Czech Senate on charges of high treason. Klaus left active politics after his second presidential term ended in March 2013 but continues to comment on domestic and foreign policy issues. He has expressed support for European far-right parties including Alternative for Germany, the Freedom Party of Austria, and Fidesz. His political views have been referred to as Klausism.
Early life Klaus was born in Prague during the Nazi occupation, and grew up in the large, then middle-class neighbourhood of Vinohrady. Klaus has claimed that he helped build barricades during the Prague uprising in May 1945, at the age of three. Klaus studied Economics of Foreign Trade at the University of Economics, Prague, graduating 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, according to his autobiography, he was forced to leave in 1970. Soon after that he was employed by the Czechoslovak State Bank, where he held various staff positions from 1971 to 1986, as well as working abroad in various Soviet-aligned countries, usually considered a privilege at the time. In 1987, Klaus joined the Institute for Prognostics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
Rise to premiership Klaus entered Czechoslovak politics during the Velvet Revolution in 1989, during the second week of the political uprising, when he offered his services as an economic advisor to the Civic Forum, whose aim was to unify the anti-government movements in Czechoslovakia and overthrow the Communist regime. Klaus became Czechoslovakia's Minister of Finance in the "government of national unity" on 10 December 1989. In October 1990, Klaus was elected chairman of the Civic Forum. Two months later, he led supporters of a free-market economy into the break-away Civic Democratic Party (Czech: Občanská demokratická strana or ODS). Following a period of strong economic growth, Klaus led ODS to the largest vote share (29.73%) in Czech parliamentary elections on 5–6 June 1992. ODS emerged as by far the largest party, with 76 seats, and Klaus thus became the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. ODS also performed strongly in the Czechoslovak federal election held the same day, becoming the largest party with 48 seats, double the number of the runners-up, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). However, ODS would still have needed support from HZDS to form a government. When he began coalition talks with HZDS leader Vladimir Meciar, Klaus told Meciar that unless HZDS was willing to agree to a tighter federation, the only alternative was for the Czechs and Slovaks to form independent nations. As Meciar was unwilling to agree to the former option, on 23 July the two leaders agreed to dissolve Czechoslovakia, to take effect on 1 January 1993. Klaus led ODS to be the party with the largest vote share (29.62%) in the 1996 parliamentary elections, and remained prime minister in a minority government. However, towards the end of 1997 he was forced to step down as prime minister by opponents in his party in connection with accusations of funding irregularities in the ODS. During his term as prime minister, President Václav Havel heavily criticized Klaus' policy of voucher privatization of previously state-owned enterprises. The policy was designed to bring about a speedy transition from command economy to free-market economy, but Havel cited the voucher privatization as a cause of the country's subsequent economic problems.
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