Prague Visit Reveals Serious Cracks
The Czechs have a potentially catastrophic problem with the Lisbon Treaty. If Lisbon is ratified they face a potential claim which could cost them about a quarter of the country’s entire wealth. The Czech Republic has overwhelming reasons to reject it. And their president knows it well.
These problems got a thorough and tendentious airing during a visit to Prague earlier this month (November 2008) by a delegation from the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs committee.
The visit was made for two reasons. First, in January the Czech Republic takes over the presidency of the European Council from France, and holds it for the first six months of 2009. Secondly, not before, and maybe not even during the presidency, the Czech government will not ratify the Lisbon treaty. At present the Czechs are one of only four countries not to do so.
The EP's delegation was made up of federalists determined to pressure the Czech Republic’s incoming presidency of the council, and two sceptics - myself and Hanne Dahl from Denmark. The federalists included the chairman of the committee, Joe Leinen (German socialist), Johannes Voggenhuber (Austrian Green) Andrew Duff (who introduced himself everywhere as a European federalist rather than a British lib-dim and paid for himself to go, he was so desperate) Inigo Mendez de Vigo, Spanish Christian Democrat, and several others from all sides of the political spectrum, and all pro the Lisbon Treaty.
Only Hanne Dahl and I were willing to talk to the Czechs as equals. The others treated the government officials and parliamentarians we met as naughty schoolboys in need of a firm lecture on their responsibilities as from January 2009, and their inadequacy and incompetence in not having completed the Lisbon ratification process before taking over from France. They were told more than once that their presidency would not be credible, would hold the EU in contempt, and might not even be allowed to proceed. The Czechs were also threatened with the loss of a Commissioner next year if they failed to ratify.
The tone and attitude of the pro-Lisbon delegates was at times disgraceful.
As earlier reported on this website, at one hugely embarrassingly moment Andrew Duff called the Czech government “deluded” if they thought they could change Lisbon or hold the presidency without signing. Indeed, he suggested the Irish might be told they would not hold the presidency at all – even when it was their turn – if they did not sign Lisbon. He did not take that idea further and speculate on the reaction in Ireland to such a threat.
Later, Duff described the President of the Czech Republic as getting no better than a Beta Minus for his submission to the Czech Constitutional Court on the options open to the country when deciding on the potential conflict of interest if they (he, that is) signed the Lisbon Treaty. It was a breathtaking insult to the head of a sovereign nation - arrogant, totalitarian pressure, ruthlessly applied by a supposed guest in their country.
Only a week or so previously the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, told a glorious dinner held by the Bruges Group in London to celebrate Mrs Thatcher’s famous speech that, while they had hoped for European countries working together in a spirit of willing and active co-operation, instead the EU was now guilty of excessive intervention, centralisation and standardisation. It was looking for democracy where it does not exist – above the member states.
Finally Mr Klaus told the Bruges Group “ever closer union must be reversed. We are not just an EU province.”
A first meeting with the deputy prime minister yielded little beyond pleasantries, and a working breakfast with the lower house of the Czech parliament also revealed little because no simultaneous translation was available. Later we had meetings with a group of academics and students of constitutional law at the university.
During our meeting with the Czech lower house, Mendez de Vigo was particularly forgetful. He tried to suggest that the national parliaments will get more power from Lisbon, but forgot to mention that they still cannot change a word of any regulation. He then pointed out that the symbols of the union had been dropped from Lisbon, but forgot to mention they have just be reintroduced by the back door through the very same committee – Constitutional Affairs.
Tensions shot up even higher, however, when the vexatious problem of the Sudeten-Germans arose at a meeting with the Senate – the Czech upper house. If Lisbon is ratified and comes into force, the Czechs know there will immediately be serious trouble with the Sudeten-Germans – people who used to live in an area of what is now the Czech Republic seized by Germany in 1938 and returned to Czechoslovakia as part of the settlement of the Second World War. Those Germans regard themselves as dispossessed to this day, despite the highly illegal means of their gaining possession in the first place.
They are expected to use the Lisbon Treaty's Charter of Fundamental Rights (said years ago by Keith Vaz, then Minister for Europe, to be no more important than a copy of the Beano) to take the Czechs to court in what would be one of the biggest human rights cases of its kind ever. They would seek to recover what they claim is their property and/or punitive compensation.
The Charter includes a reference to all EU citizens having equal rights and the right to appeal to the courts on grounds of discrimination. Hans-Gert Pottering, president of the European Parliament no less, told a meeting of the Sudeten-German Territorial Association not long ago that every European citizen would have the right to appeal to the ECJ in Luxembourg against discrimination. Now why say that – and to that audience – if it meant nothing?
The Czechs also know that, if they and the German both ratify the Treaty, such legal action might start whether or not Lisbon comes fully into force. The Germans will argue both parties have signed up to the terms, and therefore the Czech Republic is liable.
There is another angle to this problem as well, at the moment hypothetical.
Northern Cyprus is still hosting 40,000 armed Turkish troops who control all the property in that part of the island seized from Greek Cypriots during the Turkish invasion in 1974. They too want restitution and/or compensation for their losses and the change in values since the invasion. The Greeks will be watching what happens in Sudetenland very closely indeed.
So should the rest of us. Future Turkish attempts to join the EU would be dramatically damaged by such a turn of events.
Which brings us back to the biggest and most edgy event of our visit. Lunch with the Senate - an upper house which, quaintly, is further down the road from the lower house! There the doubters expressed themselves clearly. There Duff and others in our delegation tried to apply blatant pressure. As usual our chairman Joe Leinen tried to stop me speaking until the very end, and I was preceded by a Senator who raised the Sudeten-German issue. I responded, explained the link between the Charter of Human Rights and the threat to Czech solvency if the Sudeten-Germans used the charter to re-test their claims for restitution or compensation through the courts. I attempted to finish by making the comparison with the situation evolving in Cyprus over Turkish seizure of Greek property 35 years ago.
Long before I had finished, Leinen leapt out of his chair and was violently rude to the Senator and me. He attempted quite literally to shout us down, claiming Lisbon is not retrospective. This begged the question why did Pottering say what he said weeks before, but in the mayhem there was no chance to force the point. The tension was electric. Lunch finished with subdued bad temper right across the room. Afterwards one of the Senators sought me out to say mine was the voice of sanity and a breath of fresh air.
The Senate was also told that some EU countries that had failed to introduce pieces of legislation locally were starting to resort to asking the EU to do it for them at community level – blatantly circumventing their own elected legislature. Again, the implication was the Czechs should be grateful for all the benefits of EU membership and sign the Lisbon Treaty.
During our meetings with academics and students one of the lawyers assured us that President Klaus can refuse to sign the Lisbon Treaty into law, even if the Senate did pass it. He had a constitutional duty to do what was right for the country – a point Leinen rubbished later. Leinen suggested the president was just a figurehead to sign whatever the parliament decided. (He did not mention the British monarch has the same role and had signed, although he could have done.)
Next morning at a press conference to four journalists Leinen hi-jacked the event “because” there was no room for a top table for the whole delegation – despite some having left already. Sudeten came up in a question and Leinen again rubbished the risk of German restitution under the Charter of Human Rights in the Lisbon Treaty.
I then offered a contrary view to the media and he claimed we had an “agreement”, whatever that meant. Not with me he didn’t. I reminded him he had mentioned freedom of speech only minutes earlier, after which the camera crew and I went into the street and recorded an interview there.
In addition to airing the Sudeten-German problem. my messages were these:
* The Czech Republic is one of four (not two as Leinen claimed) not yet having ratified Lisbon. The others are Ireland (following their referendum) Germany (Leinen’s own country, no less) and Poland where the president says he won’t sign until the Irish have ratified.
* The threat that somehow their not having ratified nor joined the eurozone will diminish their presidency of the council in early 2009 is utter nonsense. Not a shred of evidence was produced to support such a claim, which was essentially an attempt to pressure the Czech’s into toeing the line.
* Years ago Chirac told the EU that any country not ratifying the then Constitutional Treaty will have to leave. They didn’t and the French are still there.
* The president of France, Sarkozy, has been tearing around the world like a latter-day Napoleon trying to sort out the current financial crisis. He has not needed Lisbon for any authority or justification.
* The Charter of Fundamental Rights which has been included in the Lisbon Treaty is merely EU legislation. It does not have to be regarded as an international treaty. If ratification were to become inevitable, might not the Czech government exclude the Charter? What would the EU then do? Very little probably, since they are so desperate to get Lisbon onto the statute books.
Ashley Mote MEP
November 2008
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