Klaus, Nečas slam euro plan

Rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) seems unconvinced by a plan to save the euro announced Dec. 5 by the eurozone's most powerful leaders, and so do Czech political leaders.

Within hours of an announcement by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that they had struck a grand bargain to push for greater fiscal integration among the European Union's 27 member states, S&P issued a warning to 15 eurozone nations that their credit ratings could face a downgrade.

But before that, Czech leaders teed off on the plan, which would require national parliaments to adhere to strict legal restraints when it comes to issuing debt. The plan would include non-eurozone countries like the Czech Republic.

"Centralization of national budgets is such an enormous interference into state sovereignty that it is absolutely unacceptable for us," Prime Minister Petr Nečas said of the plan, which Merkel and Sarkozy announced in Paris ahead of a key EU summit. "It is especially unacceptable for a state that does not even use the euro."

The Merkel-Sarkozy plan would amend current EU treaties to allow centralized oversight of national budgets and allow for legal sanctions to be imposed on countries violating any new deficit provisions.

President Václav Klaus, a vocal Euroskeptic and a strong opponent of further European integration, reportedly refused to comment on the announcement by Merkel and Sarkozy but did have some scathing words for the leaders of Europe's two largest economies - dubbed "Merkozy" - whom he said are now in complete control of the EU.

"The Sarkozy-Merkel tandem is now the most significant EU institution, and in no way is it based upon any words in EU agreements and treaties," he told the daily Lidové noviny. "We can completely rule out all freedom and democracy in Europe, in a similar way that communism strove to do."

Klaus said the "toothless" leaders of the EU and its member states have been powerless to stop the "seizure of power" by Merkel and Sarkozy.

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Jack Buehrer can be reached at
jbuehrer@praguepost.com