Thursday, 15 October 2009Czech President Vaclav Klaus resists signing the Lisbon Treaty despite the Parliament’s approval by pointing out two reasons. First, some senators have recently applied to the Czech Constitutional Court to check whether the Lisbon Treaty infringes national sovereignty or not, and Klaus declared that he would wait for the decision of the court to sing the Treaty. The second reason for Klaus’ resistance is that the EU's charter of fundamental rights, a part of the Lisbon Treaty, can damage the Czech Republic interests; because according to Klaus, the ethnic Germans who were forced to leave the former Czechoslovakia at the end of the WWII can claim compensation from the Czech Republic in line with this charter. Last Thursday, Klaus argued that the Czech Republic should opt-out from the EU's charter of fundamental rights.
As a result of this attempt by Klaus, yesterday, Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer went to Brussels to show the Czech government’s good intentions.
After a meeting between Barroso and Fischer, Barroso said that “We fully respect the constitutional order of the Czech Republic. It is therefore clear that we have to wait for the conclusion of the procedure in the Constitutional Court in the Czech Republic. But as soon as this is done, the judgement permitting, we expect the Czech Republic to honour the commitments it has taken. It is in the interests of nobody, least of all the interests of the Czech Republic, to delay matters further.”
Yesterday, the Czech Constitutional Court declared that the proceedings for the mentioned claim would start on October 27; therefore, if the court rejects the claim, there will be two more days before the EU Summit, which will take place on 29-30 October, to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Thus, The Commission and the Swedish EU presidency are trying to put pressure on Klaus to sign the Treaty by showing their support for the Czech government’s stance on this issue.
“I have encouraged Prime Minister Fischer whose commitment and good faith I wish to salute to find a solution for the issues not yet clarified internally and to discuss this with the Swedish Presidency, with whom we are also in touch, so as to allow the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty by the end of the year,” said Barroso.
By Yilmaz KAPLAN (JTW)
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Thursday, 15 October 2009
Journal of Turkish Weekly
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