GERMAN FOREIGN minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned chancellor Angela Merkel not to allow the “populist” tactics of her Bavarian political allies to delay ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.
Ratification is on hold since the constitutional court, after dismissing challenges to the treaty, demanded a rewrite of an accompanying law to give the German parliament more say on the hand- over of powers to Brussels.
Leading members of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party of Dr Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), are calling for greater parliamentary say in German EU policy and greater constitutional court oversight of incoming EU legislation.
“It is up to Dr Merkel to make sure there is order in her own camp,” said Mr Steinmeier yesterday. “I hope this issue will not be instrumentalised for domestic means by a regional party – and by that I mean the CSU. We need a quick ratification to prevent causing problems for the ratification process in other countries.”
Germany is anxious to pass the new law in special parliamentary sittings ahead of the general election on September 27th. Missing that date would push ratification in Germany beyond Ireland’s second referendum on October 2nd to as late as December.
Dr Merkel has already asked her CSU counterpart, Horst Seehofer, to deal with the matter. CDU MEP Elmar Brok has warned that a CSU-inspired delay would lead to a “marginalisation of German policies in Brussels”. The wrangling over the law, he added, was endangering the already tight timetable for agreement.
Asked about his concerns yesterday, Mr Brok described the paper as “pedagogical support” for the party. “The CSU is only thinking locally, not on a broader level,” he said. “It may be that some in the party vote against this but not the party as a whole.”
Parallel to the CSU demands, several federal states are calling for the redrafted law to revive the European committee of the upper house, the Bundesrat.
Meanwhile, former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer has attacked the ruling of the constitutional court in Karlsruhe as “cowardly” and “depressing”.
“Rather than say ‘no’ to Lisbon . . . it throws out the accompanying law and attacks the fata morgana [mirage] of a European ‘federal state’,” he wrote in Die Zeit. “And that just to make sure that future integration is decided not in Berlin . . . but through the court in Karlsruhe.”