ANALYSIS:Our approval of Lisbon may have saved more than just the treaty – perhaps the entire EU, writes GAVIN BARRETT
THE POTENTIAL significance for Europe of Ireland’s Yes vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum may not yet be fully understood by all. It is truly monumental. If the Lisbon Treaty now comes into force, the Irish electorate’s rethink will have rescued the viability of European unity, in all probability for a generation.
If the No side had prevailed in the referendum, the EU would have suffered a massive, morale-sapping blow. Not just the Lisbon Treaty itself would have been killed off. So too would any prospect of reforming the EU for years, given the likely imminent arrival in power in Britain of David Cameron’s Conservative party – set to be the first election victory of a Eurosceptic-led Eurosceptical party.
With a Conservative-ruled UK then vetoing every subsequent attempt to improve the EU, it is far from improbable that Europe would have ultimately divided between states advocating further integration and opposing it: a truly disastrous eventuality for the continent.
The Lisbon Treaty is not quite a done deal yet, however. Two other states have not yet ratified: Poland and the Czech Republic. In both cases, their parliaments have voted approval, but their Eurosceptical presidents have withheld their signature.
Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski, however, promised last July to consent to ratification if Ireland voted Yes – and sources close to him now indicate he will fulfil this promise soon. But can Czech president and veteran Eurosceptic Václav Klaus now somehow prevent the treaty from entering into force?
Klaus would clearly like to do this. This could be done by delaying his signature, and thus preventing Lisbon entering into force until a UK election was held, probably next spring, at the latest next June.
The newly elected Conservatives would then kill off the treaty by first withdrawing British ratification, then holding a referendum on Lisbon in which they would recommend a No vote. David Cameron wrote ostentatiously to Klaus in July, confirming his party’s willingness to play its part in this scenario.
Klaus has declared himself “in no hurry” to assent to the treaty. Last Tuesday, in what was widely perceived as a move to facilitate his dilatoriness, 17 of his Civic Democratic party allies in the Czech senate petitioned the Czech constitutional court to consider the constitutionality of the Lisbon Treaty for a second time – allowing Klaus to declare somewhat disingenuously “my signature is not the order of the day. I will wait for the constitutional court’s verdict.”
Such delaying tactics can work only for so long, however. Although it took seven months for an earlier complaint against the treaty to be rejected by the Czech constitutional court – a delay which might prove fatal to the treaty now if repeated – Czech chief justice Rychetský has indicated that the court will work swiftly on this new complaint.
He has offered his view the most contentious provisions were challenged in the earlier proceedings (in which the treaty was upheld). It is thus hard to imagine this new case lasting more than a few short months.
Once proceedings are over, Klaus will have little cover for delaying – but this does not mean such behaviour is entirely beyond him.
He has tarried lengthily on several occasions – assenting to the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, for example, only a full nine months after the Czech parliament had approved it.
Given the stakes, the pressure applying now will be of a wholly different magnitude.
There will certainly be international pressure – and the Czech Republic has no greater an interest in isolating itself internationally than Ireland. France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, has pressed for an emergency summit meeting of European leaders.
However, Štefan Füle, the Czech European affairs minister, has wisely warned direct pressure on Klaus could be counterproductive: Klaus noticeably did not make himself contactable by the Swedish EU presidency on Saturday.
National-level pressure will also exist. Opposition Social Democrats – likely to come to power in elections at the weekend – have “intensively” debated the possible temporary removal of Klaus’s functions in favour of the prime minister under Article 66 of the Czech constitution, and the idea has also been aired at cabinet level.
There is also the democratic – and possibly constitutional – unacceptability of the president of a parliamentary democracy frustrating the will of the majority of parliament’s members.
Former constitutional court judge Vojtech Cepl has compared a Czech Republic in which this was possible to “some kind of absolutist monarchy”.
Klaus seemed to indicate an understanding to the BBC at the weekend that, once the new constitutional case is over, he must agree to ratification, observing that the British “should have been doing something much earlier and not just now, too late, saying something and waiting for my decision”. Some months ago, he said he would be “the last” politician in Europe to sign the Lisbon Treaty.
Ironically, this is now about to prove true – but his signature is going to be the one that enables the treaty he despises to come into force.
Where will this leave David Cameron’s hopes of stopping the treaty? The answer, very simply, is that it will end them. Once the Lisbon Treaty comes into force, it will be irreversible. The new institutional architecture will be there to stay.
Much to the chagrin of the more Europhobic supporters, Cameron will have to abandon a now legally pointless referendum on Lisbon in favour of a concerted effort to repatriate certain powers to Britain – in social, employment, justice and home affairs. Whether he even succeeds here remains to be seen, although the UK could threaten to block accession of new member states if it does not get its way.
His hardest job will probably be managing Europhobia within his own party: an astonishing 40 per cent of Tory supporters favour leaving the EU altogether.
Gavin Barrett is a senior lecturer in the school of law at University College Dublin, specialising in European Union law