Estonia's Laar awarded Turgot Prize
11.04.2008
TALLINN, Apr 10, BNS - At a festive ceremony at the French Senate Mart Laar, chairman of the Estonian conservative Pro Patria and Res Publica Union was awarded the Liberty Prize conferred on him by the Turgot Institute.
Laar was awarded the prize for Estonia's radical and successful economic reforms, which have been used as a model also in other transition countries, as well as for his activity as adviser of Georgia's economic renewal.
In his speech at the reception of the prize Mart Laar said that the main thing one needs to carry out radical and successul reforms is the courage to decide.
He said that unfortunately courage had been replaced by political correctness in the Western world. "If the fall of the Soviet empire largely began from Ronald Reagan's courage to call it with its right name, the empire of evil, then in today's Europe people are even afraid to speak in a loud voice about crimes of Communism, referring to them as "crimes of totalitarianism," Laar said.
"Political correctness has become a real danger to the future of the West, it is taking more and more courage to break through it," he added.
The Turgot Institute Prize was this year awarded also to former French President Edouard Balladur, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto and Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) was the head of French finances in 1774-1776 whose aim was transition from regulated economy to free market economy.
During his period of services he managed to do away with guilds and scrap interior customs barriers in grain trade.
Tallinn newsroom, +372 610 8815, sise@bns.ee
 
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