EU Lisbon Treaty: Erratic Presidents playing games

Almost 22 months after the EU Treaty of Lisbon was signed (13 December 2007), two erratic Presidents are still playing games, inventing new twists.

Spokespersons for Polish President Lech Kaczynski have kept offering the public different dates for the final signature of the ratification instrument. The latest guesses are Saturday or Sunday.

In the Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus refused to take any calls from Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt for several days after the Irish Lisbon 2009 referendum result became clear.

When Klaus finally did speak with Reinfeldt today, he had added a new excuse to the delay caused by the renewed legal challenges by his pals to the Czech Constitutional Court.

Klaus now requires a two line “footnote” to the amending treaty, somehow related to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

(The United Kingdom and Poland have opted out of the EU Charter, which embodies the fundamental freedoms and rights of EU citizens, but the Czech Republic has not opted out of the Charter.)



Among others, the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and the BBC have reported on the new turn of events, but the contents and the legal status of the new demand are still unclear.



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The 27 member states of the European Union have been forced to send the old Commission and the High Representative Javier Solana into injury time, and they are anxious to get the institutions up and running.

Something is rotten in the state of the constitutional systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.



Ralf Grahn

Germany ratifies EU Lisbon Treaty

According to EUbusiness 23 September 2009 Germany ratifies the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty: Federal President Horst Köhler has signed the ratification instrument, as attributed to a spokesman. (I found no confirmation on the President’s web site.)


If the information is correct, the purists may still argue that the ratification instrument has to deposited in Rome, for the ratification process to be complete, but does anyone doubt the ability of the German diplomatic service in this respect?

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Three to go


After Germany, only three ratifications remain uncompleted:

• Ireland, where the Lisbon II referendum takes place on 2 October 2009, promising an Irish Commissioner and offering assurances on sensitive issues
• Poland, where President Lech Kaczynski has withheld his signature despite parliamentary approval of the Lisbon Treaty
• The Czech Republic, where a few defeated henchmen of President Vaclav Klaus do their utmost to paralyse the European Union by a new legal challenge

In addition, at sub-state level the Legal Committee of the Åland Parliament has still to produce a report on the application of the Lisbon Treaty in this autonomous region of Finland.



Ralf Grahn

Russia and Ukraine: Pacta sunt servanda?

Yesterday evening the Czech Presidency of the EU Council was still expressing its disappointment at the failure of Russia and Ukraine to reach a deal on the supply and transit of gas to EU member states:

http://www.eu2009.cz/en/news-and-documents/news/czech-presidency-urges-russia-and-ukraine-to-continue-negotiations-6545/

The negotiations resumed later in the evening, and in the wee hours of Sunday morning the BBC reported: Gas to flow after deal in Moscow. The report is available here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7834796.stm

The BBC quotes the Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko saying that the Russian energy company Gazprom and its Ukrainian counterpart Naftohaz have been instructed to draw up the relevant contracts by Monday. After the documents on the transit and purchase of gas have been signed, the routes for gas transit and gas supplies to Europe will be restored.

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Pacta sunt servanda?

In the best case, even if a deal has been reached, EU citizens still have to wait before the heating turns on.

In the worst case, this is just the latest ‘agreement’ between Russia and Ukraine to unravel before it is signed and long before it is put into practice. Neither the supply monopoly nor the transit monopoly has won any points on credibility, lately.


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The supplier’s strong arm tactics and the evasions of an essentially bankrupt transit country have exposed the vulnerability of EU consumers to whims beyond the control of their individual governments and the existing powers of the European Union.

The Lisbon Treaty would enhance the powers of the European Union in the energy area to a degree, but first the treaty has to be ratified.

Are Lech Kaczynski, Vaclav Klaus and Mirek Topolanek listening? Do the Irish understand the interests at stake, for Europe and for themselves?


Ralf Grahn

Kaczynski: Liberum veto

Without the ’liberum veto’ Poland would have a much happier history to remember, so Polish president Lech Kaczynski has offered final proof why the same rule of minority terror must be scrapped if the European Union wants to survive and prosper.

See BBC News item ‘Poland in new blow to EU treaty’:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7482660.stm

Those bent on destroying the EU can perhaps find democratic merit in Kaczynski overriding his country’s parliament (at least temporarily deferring signature; legal authority unclear) and Czech president Vaclav Klaus openly agitating against the political commitments of the Czech government.

But for the vast majority of European Union member states and for thinking EU citizens Kaczynski must have driven the final nail into the coffin of the unanimity rule. The same Kaczynski who is personally to blame for many of the worst features of the Lisbon Treaty.

With or without Ireland, the Czech Republic, Poland and possibly some others, the willing member states must save the European Union by scrapping the ‘liberum veto’, even if they have to establish a new union to do so.

The added bonus would be that without Kaczynski important reforms could take effect much earlier than 2014 and 2017.


Ralf Grahn



Update 1 July 2008: According to the Wikepedia article on the Treaty of Lisbon, the Polish House of Representatives voted 384 for, 56 against (with 12 abstentions) and the Senate 74 for, 17 against (with 6 abstentions) to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Friends of parliamentary sovereignty take note.