Brussels, 18/02/2009 (Agence Europe) - An important first stage in ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by the Czech Republic has been achieved: on 18 February 2009, the Czech parliament's chamber of deputies approved the Lisbon Treaty, with 125 of the 197 parliamentarians present voting in favour (five votes more than the 3/5 majority required by the Czech constitution). The Czech Senate has yet to vote, after which the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, who is hostile to the Lisbon Treaty, will need to agree to sign the ratification law. During the debate in the chamber of deputies ahead of the vote, prime minister Mirek Topolanek urged parliamentarians to back the legislation, explaining that he himself would be voting with his head rather than his heart. We will not achieve anything by failing to ratify and there is no alternative, he said, regretting that the treaty favoured a strengthening of the centralist aspects of the EU and led to a weakening of nation states. In the end, only half of the ODS parliamentarians (Topolanek's party) voted in favour of the Lisbon Treaty.
The chair of the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee, Jo Leinen, welcomed the vote as an important step towards ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by the Czech Republic. Leinen said that the day before Eurosceptic Vaclav Klaus addressed the EP plenary in Brussels on 19 February, the backing of three-fifths of Czech parliamentarians for the new treaty showed that Vaclav's opposition to the Lisbon treaty was an “isolated action with no legitimacy.”. (H.B. trans fl)