According to participants at the EU’s post-Irish referendum summit in Brussels, the atmosphere among the 27 national leaders is not one of crisis or despair, but resignation and a sense of having been there and done all this before – i.e., after the French and Dutch threw out the old constitutional treaty in 2005.
However, it’s also clear there are more than a few mutual recriminations going on in the corridors of the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels. “It’s what I’d call the ‘day after effect’,” says one top-level EU official, referring to last week’s Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty.
If Ireland is a problem, what does that make the Czech Republic? The Czechs have been resisting efforts to include a line in the final summit communiqué that would emphasise the EU’s efforts to go ahead with national ratifications of the treaty in spite of the Irish No. This is irritating some delegations, who think the Czechs are riding on the coat-tails of the Irish rather than doing the decent thing – or the courageous thing – and joining the rest of the EU in defending the Lisbon treaty.
The situation at present is that the Czech Senate (upper house of parliament) has sent the Lisbon treaty to the nation’s constitutional court for scrutiny. President Vaclav Klaus has declared the treaty dead – the only EU head of state to go so far. The Irish No, meanwhile, has emboldened critics of the treaty in the ruling Civic Democrat party, whose hold on power is not particularly strong. All of which makes Czech ratification of Lisbon far from a done deal.
Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, is giving private assurances that his government will ratify Lisbon. But when Czech officials appear in front of TV cameras at the summit, they are saying something subtly different. For example, Alexandr Vondra, the Czech minister for European affairs, says the Lisbon treaty is “in the parking lot” and a jolly good thing, too. ”Don’t press us. Any pressure could be counter-productive,” Vondra warns.
In the end, the Czechs may have to buckle. They are due to take over the EU’s rotating presidency next January, and it would create a disastrous impression if, when they move into the hot seat, they were seen as bad team players.
But if I were a betting man, I would not expect the Czechs to have ratified Lisbon by the EU’s next summit on October 15-16.
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