President has ambitious plans for tiny Liberland
Newly declared country is not just an Internet joke, its founder claims
When news of somebody attempting to establish a new country between Serbia and Croatia first came out, most people dismissed it as a joke.
But Vít Jedlička, the self proclaimed president of the Free Republic of Liberland, claims that the project is quite serious. He has come up with a plan that counts on 30,000 to 50,000 citizens by the year 2025 and a budget surplus of $130 million, as well as up to $1 billion in capital investments into infrastructure.
The country, which right now is only recognized by North Sudan, is the third smallest sovereign state after the Vatican and Monaco. The seven square kilometer piece of land is located on the Danube on what Jedlička says in unclaimed land, though Croatia at least disputes this.
If Jedlička gets his way, the area will be developed to become a new silicon valley in Europe.
“It has been known that this was a no man’s land for 24 years. There were academic studies on that fact. But nobody seemed to bother to claim this piece of land. Serbia said they do not mind the creation of Liberland, it is not on their territory. It was a statement by Serbia 11 days after the creation of Liberland and after we got the first strong media coverage,” Jedlička.
“Croatia had a governmental meeting on Liberland and they decided they will say that Liberland is an internet joke. They put 100 policeman around the territory. We are quite grateful for their protection of the land at the moment. We are not in a situation to afford protection ourselves,” he said. “They recognize there is a border between Croatia and Liberland.”
The Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs in a June 2015 statement, however, said that the land was either Serbia or Croatia. “The border between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Serbia is still the subject of negotiations between the two countries. … In any case, regardless of the fact that the border has not yet been finally determined, the area concerned does not involve no man’s land (terra nullius) which could be subject to occupation by a third party,” the ministry said, adding that police there conduct legitimate measures to protect the interests of the Republic of Croatia.
Right now, access to Liberland is primarily from the Danube, which is international waters. “Croatian police … don’t allow anybody basically in and out. So our settlers have to go in and out unnoticed,” Jedlička said.
“We will have no contact with Croatia before we make some final deal about borders with them. There is road access. In future I think there will be a regular border crossing but not in the next two or three years, he said.
As one can guess from the name, the country is founded on Libertarian principles. “We are inspired by at Anglo Saxon laws, Anglo Saxon structures, but we want to make it simpler. We are also developing out law system from scratch. We are introducing basic laws on everything, and we are also trying to find the minimum amount of international regulation for get Liberland going,” he said.
Much of the plan is based on people voluntarily paying taxes. “The main source of income is the voluntary taxes that we introduced. People pay as much taxes as they feel,” he said. Long-term rental of land will also be a source of income.
“We believe that when rich people move in they like to pay taxes when they are not forced to pay them,” he said
“[It is] not a tax haven, we would like to have a tax heaven. We would like to go further than that because tax havens, they usually implement different taxes, we would like to have a voluntary tax system,” he said.
“And of course people who like tax hells, they are not too much in favor of tax heavens, but it is understandable,” he added.
Jedlička claims that people overall are socially responsible. “They understand that they need some sort of state, but we really believe the amount of money we will need to run the state will be minimal. We would like the state only to take care of diplomacy, the justice system and only security — nothing else but that. And that accounts for something like 3 percent of GDP. Nowadays the state takes something like 40 percent of GDP,” he said.
“The amount of money needed to run the society will be much smaller. People will be much wealthier. They can keep the money. They can … start running charities, churches, they can donate to private hospitals. I think it is just a much better way to run society. …You can see a great source of waste in all of the public institutions [in other countries],” he added.
Some hospitals have already shown interest, Jedlička claims. “We have eight hospitals that have already [said] they would like to move into Liberland,” he said.
Medical tourism will be one of the industries. “Hospitals all around the world are heavily overregulated. It is very hard to start a new hospital. All the sectors of the modern society in the modern economy are overregulated,” he said.
He envisions that the country will develop as an ecological paradise as well as a tax heaven. “The biggest solar company from Hungary is supporting us. They said they would supply us with a power plant to be self sustainable for free as a donation to the country,” he said.
At the end of 2015 he plans to launch an architectural competition for developing the area. “We would like to interact with nature as much as possible. One of the concepts we are developing in the architectural competition is that the whole country will be developed on lard bridges over nature, actually,” he said.
He expects that proposals will include sustainable buildings as investor and people now demand that, so there won’t need to be a governmental push to require that.
“I think we will have mostly sustainable buildings there and very safe buildings without any interference from the state. We don’t believe there is a role of the state in these things,” he said.
Things like a national theater also won’t be handled by the government. “Someone will build a national theater in Liberland just for the sake of having his name written on the national theater,” he said. Or such institutions could be crowdsourced. “It was already working that way many centuries ago when people actually put money together to make the [Czech] National Theater happen,” he said.
“I think it is much better than when the state takes money from people by force and then decides to build a national theater. People are much more proud giving their money on a voluntary basis,” he said.
Libertarians not only favor freedom for business, but also personal freedom. But Jedlička doesn’t plan on Liberland being a drug paradise. “The drug issue is not that important for us. We are not going to make it a major thing. I think we will have similar laws on drugs to Amsterdam, but it is definitely not one of the main reasons why we are setting up Liberland. …Our main reason for the creation of Liberland is economical freedom,” he said.
Applications for citizenship are now being accepted, and anyone can apply but that is no guarantee of citizenship. “At the moment you need a certain amount of merits [for citizenship]. You can get the merits by either donating to Liberland or by working for Liberland. And with these merits you can buy citizenship, but it is not the final step. You still need to go and talk to somebody and get the citizenship directly in Liberland. We have to see the people that we are giving passports to,” he said, adding that passports are currently being printed.
He won’t be selling diplomatic passports, though. “We’ll only give diplomatic passports to our diplomats,” he said.
He also envisions that he country might grow in size, but not necessarily with connected land, more like the former British empire with bits of land all over where people embrace Liberland’s values. “We might be one of the biggest nations in the world also …
Who says Liberland will be this small in a couple of years,” he said.
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