Brussels, 02/07/2008 (Agence Europe) - Will the Irish be called upon to vote on the Lisbon Treaty for the second time on the same day as the European elections in June 2009 if assurances are made, in the form of declarations annexed to the treaty, on their specific concerns (neutrality, taxation, abortion, etc)? “That is what I hear from the member states. It is one hypothesis”, the co-president of the Parliament Greens/EFA Group, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, stated on 1 July to journalists in Brussels. A positive vote from the Irish would enable the Lisbon Treaty to enter into force before the investiture of the European Parliament (with the number of seats therefore being 750) and the new European Commission, which would keep its 27 members until 2014, Mr Cohn-Bendit explained. This solution would obviously require that all the other 26 member states ratify the treaty before the European elections. Mr Cohn-Bendit is optimistic on this front, including in the case of Poland, where “President Kaczynski will not hold out for long” in his refusal to sign (see below). As for the Czech Republic, where the Greens are in government, “the government agreement states that following the opinion of the Constitutional Court, the treaty will be ratified”, although it will have to gain a majority in the Senate (the House has already approved the treaty). On the other hand, another negative Irish vote in 2009 would “take us and the debate on the European constitution back to square one”, Mr Cohn-Bendit says.
Poland. The French Presidency of the EU is trying to be reassuring, believing that the Polish ratification will come about in the near future in spite of the announcement made on Tuesday by President Lech Kaczynski that he will not sign the treaty ratification law already approved by the Parliament (EUROPE 9694). Nicolas Sarkozy pointed out that Poland was committed in the Lisbon Treaty negotiation process to obtaining a satisfactory agreement for their country, and said on Tuesday evening that he “does not doubt for a minute that this commitment will be kept”. It is a “question of morals and honesty”, he said. At a press conference following the meeting between the French government and the Commission on Tuesday in Paris, Mr Sarkozy stressed: “I cannot imagine that the President, who himself signed the document in Brussels and then in Lisbon, would call his own signature into question”. The French authorities are also stressing that there can be no further accessions to the EU without the Lisbon Treaty (an opinion shared by Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, see EUROPE 9687). The best argument to convince the Polish to ratify the treaty is therefore enlargement, they say. It is “not a threat or blackmail”, but given Warsaw's desire to support the accession of a neighbour such as Ukraine, the enlargement argument is leverage which the French Presidency intends to use. The enlargement to the countries of the former Communist bloc was “a good thing”, but it was a “grave error to enlarge Europe without first reforming the institutions. We will not make the same mistake again”, the French authorities explain.
Meanwhile, Czech President Vaclav Klaus - a fervent opponent of the Lisbon Treaty - is openly supporting his Polish counterpart's position. “Mr Klaus considers his [Mr Kaczynski's] opinion very reasonable and very close to his own”, a spokesperson said. President Klaus' signature will be needed to conclude the ratification in the Czech Republic. (H.B./A.B./transl.fl)