Who'd have believed it? In a few weeks' time, the European Council will be chaired by a head of state who says he is a Eurosceptic and even an anti-European dissident! Nobody should be mistaken - Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, is fully entitled to his own opinions and to fight for his views. The question is whether someone who opposes a treaty that his country has negotiated and approved, who welcomes the fact that another member state has not ratified it, and who expresses the desire for this non-ratification example to be followed, should not as a matter of dignity and political and intellectual integrity voluntarily give up the task of chairing the European Union's supreme body for six months. This body is not yet a formal institution (it would become an institution under the Lisbon Treaty), but the Maastricht Treaty gave it an official role, noting that the European Council gives the European Union the necessary impulses for its development and defines its guidelines. What impulses might one expect from Vaclav Klaus? Praise should be bestowed where it is due - Vaclav Klaus does not hide his views and plans. He has already announced that the European flag will not fly above the presidential palace in Prague alongside the national flag. After the recent no vote in Ireland, he said “the Lisbon Treaty is dead”. During a visit to Dublin this week, he wanted to meet Irish billionaire Declan Ganley, who funded the no campaign in Ireland in opposition to the Lisbon Treaty. Klaus said he agreed with Ganley's approach (see issue 9780 of our newsletter). Declan Ganley is looking beyond the confines of Ireland and has announced the setting up of a European “sovereignists” platform to fight the Lisbon Treaty. He is hoping to see a Eurosceptical majority at the next European Parliament (see the editorial column “A Look Behind the News” in issue 9761). Vaclav Klaus shares this aspiration but wouldn't such a president make a mockery of the European Council, or at least cast a shadow on the very existence of European summits? (F.R./transl.fl)