EUROPEAN COMMISSION president José Manuel Barroso has warned the Czech Republic it could lose its right to nominate a commissioner to the next EU executive unless it ratifies the Lisbon Treaty.
He has also appealed to eurosceptic Czech president Vaclav Klaus to avoid raising any more “artificial obstacles” for the treaty, which has already been ratified by both chambers of the Czech parliament.
“Someone who is elected by the parliament must respect the opinion of the parliament,” Mr Barroso told journalists yesterday when asked whether he thought Mr Klaus would sign the treaty enabling it to finally enter into force.
The Czech Republic is the only EU state that has not yet ratified the treaty and is coming under huge pressure from its EU partners, which are all desperate to get the Lisbon reforms in place by the end of the year.
Mr Klaus, an ardent eurosceptic opposed to EU integration, has insisted he will not sign the treaty until the Czech constitutional court hears an appeal against the treaty. The court yesterday set a hearing date for October 27th.
But he shocked EU leaders last week by demanding that the Czech Republic be allowed an opt-out from the charter of fundamental rights – a bill of rights that is made legally binding when the Lisbon Treaty enters into force.
Mr Klaus is requesting the opt-out to guarantee that ethnic Germans expelled from the Czech Republic after the second World War cannot use the charter to reclaim property. The EU and Czech government have both concluded that the charter could not be invoked to enable this.
At a meeting with Czech prime minister Jan Fischer in Brussels, Mr Barroso ratcheted up the pressure on the Czech government yesterday warning that it needs to honour its commitment to ratify the treaty.
“Good faith and loyal co-operation are principles of international law . . . the only way for the Czech Republic to be sure that it keeps a commissioner is to have the Lisbon Treaty in force,” said Mr Barroso in a reference to a legal obligation in the current EU treaties to reduce the size of the commission.
The Lisbon Treaty includes a new clause enabling EU leaders to maintain a 27-person commission if there is a unanimous vote by all 27 EU states.
Czech prime minister Mr Fischer said he was working on a solution that would accommodate the demands of Mr Klaus without forcing the re-ratification of the treaty in the 26 countries that have already backed it.
“There are several options. We have to choose the option that would not involve re-ratification,” said Mr Fischer, who added he was convinced the Czech Republic would succeed in ratifying Lisbon by the end of the year.
EU diplomats said the Czechs would probably try to follow a similar model to the guarantees on the Lisbon Treaty achieved by the Irish Government in June 2009. This would involve EU leaders agreeing a political declaration on the opt-out at the October 30th summit, which could then be transformed into EU law when the next accession treaty is ratified by all 27 EU states.
However, it remains unclear whether EU states would be willing to agree a similar solution at the very last minute for the Czech Republic. One diplomat said it would set a bad precedent and show the EU was open to blackmail.
There are also real concerns that Mr Klaus may simply choose to raise new problems to delay ratification of the treaty until a Conservative government comes to power in Britain. If the treaty is not ratified by then many observers believe Tory leader David Cameron would rescind Britain’s ratification.