Europe’s stalled governing treaty gained a new lease on life today, with the highest Czech court declaring it in line with the national constitution.
The ruling by the Constitutional Court in Brno inches the treaty toward parliamentary ratification in the Czech Republic, one of two European Unioncountries yet to endorse it. The other holdout, Ireland, is considering a new referendum on the treaty after voters rejected it in June.
EU leaders are putting pressure on both countries to enact the treaty, which would streamline the bloc’s governing machinery and create the post of a permanent president to better enable Europe to confront the economic crisis.
The “dream scenario” is for the new rules to take effect in early 2010, saidAntonio Missiroli, the chief analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. “Even if the Czech Republic at some point in time manages to ratify, the Irish unknown is so big that it is difficult to make a prediction.”
Signed in Lisbon last year, the treaty would endow the EU with a full-time president, strengthen the foreign-policy chief, give more power to the democratically elected European Parliament and shrink the European Commission, the EU’s executive agency. It requires passage by all 27 EU countries.
Parliamentary Tussle
The Lisbon Treaty would be the fourth revamp of the EU’s decision-making structures since 1991, as the bloc seeks to boost its global profile, expand the now 15-country region using the euro currency, and complete the integration of eastern Europe.
In clearing the way for the Czech parliament to go ahead with ratification, the high court’s presiding judge, Pavel Rychetsky, said in a televised session that the treaty “is not in discord” with the constitution.
Passage remains hostage to domestic Czech politics, with the stakes higher once the Czech Republic takes its first-ever turn in the EU’s rotating six-month presidency on Jan. 1. The treaty needs a three-fifths majority in both houses of parliament, margins that would require Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek to peel off opposition votes. It passed an initial procedural test in the lower house in April.
The court ruling “allows both chambers of the parliament to continue in the ratification process, even though I expect that a professional and public debate will continue further,” Topolanek said in a statement in Prague.
Opposition Backing
Backers in the Czech Republic, one of 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004, quickly seized the momentum offered by the verdict. The Green Party, the smallest in the three-party coalition, called for a special session of parliament to rush the treaty through, CT public television reported.
“I hope that obstructions will not continue and that the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified by parliament at the soonest possible time,” Jiri Paroubek, leader of the largest opposition party, with enough votes to put the coalition over the three- fifths threshold, told the iDnes news server.
The court verdict didn’t shut off all legal options of the EU’s detractors, since the judges weighed only selected clauses of the treaty. Opponents could launch a new appeal that targets other parts of the 277-page overhaul of the bloc’s founding documents.
Presidential Threat
Assuming the treaty makes it through parliament, the country’s largely ceremonial president, Vaclav Klaus, has threatened to withhold his signature.
Klaus, who has likened the EU to a communist state, expressed surprise at the verdict. Speaking at a televised briefing in Brno, he said a new court challenge is likely and called on the government to “start a serious discussion with our public” before the treaty goes to parliament.
Klaus declined today to say whether he would sign the document. In the past, the EU-skeptic president has said he will sign it if the Czech Republic is the only country left standing in the way of the treaty.
That would require Ireland to first reverse its veto of the treaty, which came in a 53.4 percent to 46.6 percent vote in June. Irish voters have done such a turnabout once before, when they blocked the EU’s current, more limited governing treaty in 2001, only to change their minds a year later.
A second vote is likely to pass, assuming that Ireland can keep its EU commissioner and is granted assurances that the bloc won’t infringe on its military neutrality or right to set tax rates, an Irish Times poll found last week.
Forty-three percent of the Irish would favor the treaty under those terms, with 39 percent against and 18 percent undecided, the poll showed. Ireland will decide before a Dec. 11-12 EU summit whether to hold a second vote
