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Members of EU to draft treaty

Czech politicians favor compromise reached at Brussels summit

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 27th, 2007 issue

After much wrangling and an all-night summit finale that wound to a close around 5 a.m. June 23, the leaders of the 27 European Union nations agreed to draft a treaty that would replace its contentious constitution effort that failed two years ago.
Among the ruling Civic Democrats (ODS), who are known as Euroskeptics, the EU compromise was seen largely as a victory.
Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek said the new treaty will give more power to national parliaments and that he is happy it will not contain any institutional or state symbols, according to the Czech News Agency.
But the differences between the new treaty and the old constitution are not as big as all the arguing would suggest, according to Milan Znoj, director of the Political Science Institute at Charles University.
“The term ‘constitution’ is a symbolic term that points out a state,” Znoj says. He suggests the term was changed to quell the fear of Euroskeptics such as the ODS and President Václav Klaus who fear that it is a way to a superstate.
Though most of the changes are simply symbolic, according to Znoj, he calls the amendment treaty “a basis [on which] the EU will be able to act.”
One of the main points of contention in the old constitution was that it created a foreign affairs minister of the European Union. The new treaty calls instead for a representative for foreign and security policy.
The voting procedures under the new draft were changed as well, giving more relative power to countries with smaller populations.
Klaus said he was glad to see that the effort to create what he saw as an EU superstate had been defeated. “This is a great victory for which we can all be thankful,” he said on Prima TV June 24.  Nonetheless, he too has expressed worry that the changes were more “cosmetic” than serious.
The plan calls for the new treaty to be completed by the end of the year and ratified by national parliaments by mid-2009. Topolánek said a referendum was not needed to ratify the treaty, but Social Democratic leader Jiří Paroubek said he supports the treaty but wants a referendum.
The new treaty is scheduled to be introduced in 2014.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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