PRAGUE: Czech President Vaclav Klaus said he had finally inked the European Union’s reforming Lisbon Treaty yesterday, becoming the last EU leader to sign the landmark document into law. “I announce that I signed the Lisbon Treaty at 1500 (1400 GMT) today,” Klaus said at a briefing, after the top Czech court said the accord was in line with the country’s constitution.
The eurosceptic Klaus’s signature is the last step in the ratification of the treaty, which aims to streamline decision-making in the 27-nation EU.
The ratification unties the EU’s hands to appoint a new European Commission—its executive arm—as well as fill the freshly-created posts of president and foreign affairs supremo.
Klaus became the European Union’s final leader to sign a bitterly contested Lisbon reform treaty into law after the country’s top court said it did not conflict with the constitution.
The Lisbon Treaty calls for the naming of an EU president and foreign policy supremo and aims to speed up decision-making in the 27 nation bloc.
But it has been held up by two referendums in the Irish Republic, legal challenges in other countries and delaying tactics by European politicians like Klaus who oppose closer integration.
Klaus, under growing pressure from other European leaders, said he signed the treaty into law only hours after the Czech Republic’s Constitutional Court rule that the treaty is legal.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said after the court’s verdict, “I hope that (ratification) can be done very soon and I hope that Europe can set aside years of constitutional and institutional debate... and that we can move forward and deal with the main issues that the European Union must now face.”
European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso also said “no further unnecessary delays should prevent the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.”
Czech lawmakers approved the treaty this year but a group of senators challenged it at the Constitutional Court last month. The court had already turned down one challenge last year, but that verdict only concerned selected paragraphs of the treaty, not the entire text.
Klaus, who described the treaty as a threat to Czech sovereignty, said he would not sign before the latest verdict.
At a summit last week, EU leaders agreed to give Prague an opt-out from parts of the treaty. Klaus had demanded an exemption to ensure that a rights charter inside the treaty would not allow ethnic Germans forced out of the former Czechoslovakia after Second World War to reclaim their property.
The delay in implementing the treaty has hampered the work of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, whose mandate expired at the end of October.
The EU also has to hold off on nominations for two top EU jobs created by the treaty—the president and foreign affairs supremo. Former British prime minister Tony Blair is among figures mentioned as a potential president.
The Lisbon Treaty is designed to smooth the workings of EU, which has almost doubled in size to 27 nations since a swathe of ex-communist nations including the Czech Republic joined in 2004.
