Word: lisbon
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...Irish question - the 21st century version of it, not the one that so vexed Victorian statesmen - has been settled. Ireland's Oct. 2 referendum vote in favor of the Lisbon Treaty and a new constitutional settlement for the European Union was decisive. It seems highly likely that Poland and the Czech Republic, the two holdouts in the process of ratifying the new treaty, will fall into line soon, however much it may pain Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the Saint-Just of Euroskepticism, to sign the document. By the beginning of next year, new institutional arrangements for the E.U. will...
...change - targeted in one of the E.U.'s signature policies - is a myth. On his only visit to the European Parliament, in February, he bluntly compared the E.U. to the Soviet Union. So it is no surprise that the 68-year-old former economist should try to sink the Lisbon Treaty, which aims to overhaul the E.U.'s decision-making process and has been a decade in the making...
...officials. While in exile between 1940 and 1945, the Czechoslovak government led by Edvard Bene? ordered that all German speakers in the Sudentland region of Czechoslovakia should be deported and their property seized. Klaus now claims that the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is incorporated in the Lisbon Treaty, might become the basis for property restitution lawsuits by descendants of those German-speakers. He says he wants a clause in the treaty guaranteeing that the Bene? Decrees will never be invalidated...
...though, has no power over issues of private property. Furthermore, the Charter of Fundamental Rights cannot be applied retrospectively. Klaus, says British Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff, is merely posturing. "His demand is utterly spurious," says Duff, who helped draft the Lisbon Treaty. "If he had been truly concerned about the Bene? Decrees, he would have raised it much earlier." Duff says that by bringing World War II into a current debate, Klaus has overstepped a mark and forfeited his credibility. "It is not honorable or civilized for a chief of state. And it sends a signal to other nationalists...
...Some talk darkly of punishing the Czech Republic, for example, by denying the country a seat in the next European Commission. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned of "consequences" if Klaus does not sign. But this could make a martyr of Klaus and stiffen his resolve. Others say the Lisbon Treaty is too important to be jeopardized, and the protocols should be agreed on quickly and quietly as long as Klaus promises he will sign immediately. (Read: "Opposition Grows to Tony Blair's Bid for E.U. President...