Václav Klaus

Václav Klaus worked as a bank clerk under Communism until the regime fell in November 1989, when he became Minister of Finance in the transitional government. He co-founded the Civic Democratic Party in 1991 and became prime minister in 1992, navigating Czechoslovakia's dissolution that January and serving as the first prime minister of the independent Czech Republic until 1998. His government collapsed in 1997; after a stint as president of the Chamber of Deputies, he won the presidency in February 2003. His two terms were defined by confrontation: vocal climate change denial, fierce Euroscepticism, and a sweeping amnesty in his final months that prompted the Senate to indict him for high treason. He left office in March 2013 and has since aligned publicly with European far-right movements, his positions now labeled Klausism.