Czechs clear way for Lisbon treaty

Czechs clear way for Lisbon treaty
By Tony Barber in Prague
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: May 6 2009 16:21 | Last updated: May 6 2009 16:21
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ba9b0be-3a4d-11de-8a2d-00144feabdc0.html


The upper house of the Czech parliament on Wednesday approved the European Union’s Lisbon treaty by a convincing majority, increasing the chances that long-awaited institutional reforms in the 27-nation bloc will come into effect on January 1, 2010.

The Czech senate’s 54-20 vote was comfortably above the margin required for approval and came as a relief to EU leaders, who have invested the best part of 10 years in trying to redesign the EU’s decision-making procedures in a way that satisfies everyone.

“This is very good news,” said José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president. “The vote reflects the Czech Republic’s commitment to a more democratic, accountable, effective and coherent European Union.”

The treaty still needs the signature of Vaclav Klaus, the Czech head of state, who is a fierce critic of Lisbon, but Czech politicians said the president’s limited powers under the nation’s constitution meant that he would have to sign the document sooner rather than later.

The Czech vote will put similar pressure on Lech Kaczynski, Poland’s president, who has delayed signing the treaty even though the Polish parliament has passed it.

The chief obstacle to the treaty now lies five months ahead in the form of an Irish referendum, expected in October, that must be held if Lisbon is to secure the necessary approval from all EU member-states. Irish voters rejected the treaty in a referendum in June 2008.

However, officials in some EU states are concerned that Mr Klaus may seek to chair a summit next month of EU national leaders in Brussels at which Ireland is supposed to receive the guarantees of sovereignty – on issues such as taxation, family law and neutrality – that it wants in order to stage its second referendum.

Mr Klaus’s strong anti-Lisbon views have given rise to the fear that he may try somehow to disrupt the summit. But France, Germany and other EU states are so exasperated with Mr Klaus that they have hinted they will demand a separate summit, if necessary, to deal with the Irish question after Sweden takes over the EU’s rotating presidency from the Czech Republic on July 1.

Czech senators passed the treaty partly because of a sense that it would redeem the country in the eyes of other EU member-states, which have often voiced sharp criticism of the Czech Republic for the way that it has run the EU since January.

The Lisbon treaty aims to streamline the EU’s decision-making procedures to take account of the EU’s enlargement over the past five years from a mainly western European group of 15 countries to a bloc of 27 countries whose borders stretch from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea.

The treaty establishes the EU’s first full-time president, broadens the role of its foreign policy chief, currently Javier Solana of Spain, and sets up a European diplomatic service. It also formalises the role of the “eurogroup”, which unites the eurozone’s 16 finance ministers, and gives the European parliament the right to co-write laws with national governments in almost all areas of EU activity.

Before the senate vote, some Czech critics of Lisbon threatened to launch an appeal with the Czech constitutional court if the treaty got the green light. However, the court already ruled last November that the treaty conformed with Czech law.