President of the Republic at the Festive Dinner in Prague Castle on May 30, 2000
30.05.2000

Dear Mr. President,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen!

First of all, please allow me to thank you for the friendliness with which you have received us here in the Czech Republic. I have often had the opportunity to speak about the special feelings that Estonian people have for your country and people. Today I would also like to emphasise that due to some national psychological reasons, everything that is happening here in your country has been extremely important for Estonians at least within the last century. Not as someone else's story, but more like our own fate.

In the first decades of the last century, the cultural movement YOUNG-ESTONIA came out with a slogan: Let us be Estonians, but also become Europeans.

Besides our neighbour Finland, your country has been the one whose fate we have been following and who has made us feel how natural and unavoidable our European connections are. This concerns the time after the First World War when we built our state and the tragic period that began in the end of the thirties as well as the last decade.

Your great son Masaryk was the ideal for the people who thought and acted in Estonia.

You bravery in the Second World War was impressive, the way how you kept your backs straight and remained yourselves under the Soviet pressure was an example to the entire Central Europe, and here I refer to all the countries violently subjected to the Soviet influence. When we stand at the Václav Square, where Jan Palach stepped into immortality, we commemorate all the victims of this era of darkness. We remember your spiritual resistance.

The Singing Revolution in Estonia went hand in hand with your Velvet Revolution.

This is how we have reached today where we can meet as independent states and weigh our possibilities.

These are first and foremost the problems of bilateral relations.

We have discussed them in our meetings, Mr. President, and we do it again during this visit.

In the field of politics, we can speak about complete unanimity, lack of disagreements.

Thereby we should have all the preconditions for close economic relations.

I hope that the members of the business delegation which accompanies me will use the days of this visit for further development of our trade relations, because the share of the Czech Republic in Estonian import and export is less than one per cent, or - to put it more politely - has a considerable potential for development.

In addition to food articles, chemical goods and means of transport, we have many other goods that we could offer to each other.

Increasingly active tourism is a good example here. More and more Estonians find their way to your country.

Cultural exchange can serve as an even better example. We are glad that all five volumes of the most important literary work of Estonia, ''Truth and Justice'' by Anton Hansen Tammsaare, and the works of our greatest writer today, Jaan Kross, have been published in the Czech language. We remember with gratitude the work the late Vladimir Mačura did with love during several decades in translating Estonian books into the Czech language and offering analysing introductions of our literature.

It is the same the other way round.

Estonian was the fourth foreign language into which ''Švejk'' was translated in the end of the twenties.

I was glad to remind you, Mr. President, already during your visit to Tallinn that 20,000 copies of your play ''Message'' were published in Estonian in 1968.

Translation of Czech literature is a tradition, which lasts thanks to the prolific translator, my friend Leo Metsar, and many others. I am happy that Leo Metsar is also present at this state visit.

No concert season in Estonia passes without Czech music.

This is a serious exchange of spirit, mentality, culture. I would like to emphasise once more that the Republic of Estonia and the Czech Republic have concluded all the basic economic agreements.

In its essence, its deeper meaning, all this is also a political issue. It is an issue that concerns natural connections in present day Europe, the formation of an integral Europe.

I believe, Mr. President, that we can be satisfied with the way things have developed. The European Union has acknowledged our pursuits and we move towards membership. Those who see this process from one side only are wrong.

We will not come to Europe. Both Czechoslovakia and Estonia have always been in Europe. The present developments are not a generous gesture of Europe, but restoration of the integrity of Europe. It has been our tragedy that Stalinist aggression spread like cancer across the borders of its country. But it was also a tragedy for Europe, because it led the life of a one-legged amputee, pretending to be standing on two feet, and it lived in this self-deception for half a century. Therefore the thinking and responsible Europe needs us as much as we need Europe. It is a mutual process.

This is why it is so important not to create any artificial additional conditions to integration, and make the decisions about every state according to the initially agreed criteria, and add no new exercises to the homework already done. Formation of new groups for evaluation of the readiness of every state confuses the evaluation criteria. Here, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot forget a simple psychological aspect. It is one thing when a state has not joined the European Union because it has simply not wanted to do so. This is the example of Norway, the example of a state that makes its decisions freely and independently. It is another thing when remaining outside the integrated Europe has been forced on a state, dictated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the arbitrary Yalta treaties.

The faster Europe and the entire world manage to get rid of this bad-tasting legacy, the better. It has lasted unbearably long already.

But something has still been achieved by the end of the 20th century. I have always believed in the victory of reason. It is meaningful that I visited your country as a full member of NATO during my first state visit to the Czech Republic, that we will fly to Chesky Krumlov tomorrow; that we will meet members of the Czech armed forces, who are also the soldiers of NATO.

The world is really moving and changing.

I am very pleased that the Czech Republic understands and supports the wish of Estonia to join NATO. This helps to eradicate the grey zones, which, as we know, have never served stability and peace.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen.

The Czech Republic has surrounded us with heart-warming hospitality. Thank you again for this.

Please allow me to wish you, President Havel, and your wife strength, health and success on behalf of Mrs. Helle Meri and myself.

Let us raise our glasses to President Václav Havel and Mrs. Dagmar Havlová, whose absence from our company we regret.

To the success and prosperity of the Czech Republic!