Klaus' Lisbon request exposes divisions

Before signing the Lisbon Treaty, President Václav Klaus demands an exemption for the Czech Republic from a human rights protocol he says could open the country up to restitution claims from Germans expelled after World War II.

But the timing of his request and the increasingly intense rhetoric surrounding Lisbon is magnifying how political divisions, long plaguing the country internally, are damaging the Czech Republic's image on the European stage. At the same time, Klaus' request raises questions about the performance of Czech Lisbon negotiators in past years - as the United Kingdom and Poland both received the exemption Klaus now seeks.  

"When there is an official Czech position, other countries can react to that," said Piotr Maciej Kaczyński of the Brussels-based European Center for Policy Studies. "They need to agree internally on what they want and how to solve this crisis situation. Without that, there will not be an external solution."

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek issued a similar statement Oct. 9. Poland ratified the Lisbon Treaty Oct. 10, leaving the Czechs as the last of 27 member states to approve the controversial agreement, which among other things would give Europe its first permanent president.

Klaus: "Most people are not aware of it, but the Lisbon Treaty constitutes a fundamental change... I have always considered this treaty a step in the wrong direction."

Topolánek: "Klaus seeks disputable issues in the Constitution and is trying to change a parliamentary system into a semi-presidential system."

Fischer: "The president's condition was not known at the time of negotiating Lisbon, and was not raised by the president in the course of the ratification process in Parliament."

Paroubek: "ČSSD deputies and senators unanimously supported the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty. It wasn't the ČSSD who ... elected Václav Klaus president."

Reaction on the Czech political scene to Klaus' request has run the gamut from demanding he be removed from office to full agreement with his proposal. Prime Minister Jan Fischer was slated to meet with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso Oct. 13 in Brussels. He said Oct. 12 he would negotiate on behalf of Klaus' request if the president would guarantee this is his last demand before signing Lisbon, though full compliance from the EU with Klaus' request remains a virtual impossibility.

If the Czech Republic were to receive an opt-out clause from the European Charter on Fundamental Rights, it would be an alteration of the treaty, requiring all 26 member states that have already approved the document to vote again. A likely compromise solution is a guarantee forged in a fashion similar to ones given to Ireland before its recent Lisbon vote. They will officially become EU law as part of the next accession treaty, likely to be that of Croatia. A more complete discussion of the issue is expected at an EU summit Oct. 29-30.

Klaus has been silent on the idea of a guarantee for months, if not years, but raised similar concerns as early as 2002.

Klaus sent a letter to then Prime Minister Miloš Zeman, who was negotiating the Czech Republic's accession to the EU, requesting a footnote eliminating possible restitution claims related to the Beneš Decrees.

In a March 11, 2002, interview with Prima TV, Klaus said, "I very much hope in the accession to the European Union we are clearly told they would not change anything from the past, that there is no claim on our entry by the European Union to attempt and reinterpret history or change orders."

In February, the Chamber of Deputies, before voting in favor of Lisbon, passed a resolution asking that any agreement on the Lisbon Treaty "ensure that this cannot act retroactively and to challenge the legal and property relations arising from the Czech legislation, especially from the years 1940 to 1946."   

Most interpretations of the charter, including those by attorneys tied to Fischer's government, indicate it could not be applied retroactively to events that happened more than 60 years ago. Ironically, the same legal principle scuttled early Czech elections that had been scheduled for the fall.

"There is already a general rule that the court would never go to apply to something as old as the Beneš Decrees," Kaczyński said. "That is not written in the treaty, so you cannot exclude it 100 percent, but the likelihood is minimal."

Former Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg headed Lisbon negotiations for the government of former Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek. The Charter on Fundamental Rights was added to the Lisbon Treaty in 2007.

Anger at home and abroad

"We have a Czech-German declaration. We know the court in Strasbourg was deciding on these things," Schwarzenberg told the daily Právo Oct. 13. "We were not and are not of such an opinion there would be any danger to the Czech Republic."

Klaus' decision to wait until Oct. 9 to re-raise the issue has sparked anger both at home and abroad.

"We regret that President Václav Klaus did not raise his reservations two years ago when the prime minister commissioned the signature of this document. His latest step puts the Czech Republic into a negative light," reads an official statement by the Civic Democratic Party.

Others take issue with the fundamentals of his request based on the idea that it seeks to exempt the country from guaranteeing certain human rights.

"The new argument of Klaus about the Beneš Decrees cannot be taken seriously," said Green Party Chairman Ondřej Liška, who is proposing to oust Klaus from office. "It is only a game on a string of primitive nationalism. It looks as if Klaus is initializing the campaign for a new right-wing extremist movement, of which he would like to take leadership."

Bernd Posselt, a spokesman for Sudeten Germans, the group addressed by the Beneš Decrees and expelled from the Czech lands in the 1940s, called Klaus' demand "a cynical game involving the fate of millions of people who were stripped of their rights, expelled and many of them murdered, and their offspring."

Klaus is empowered to negotiate international treaties by Article 63 of the Czech Constitution. He rescinded that right to Topolánek's government during the Lisbon process, but, "He can always re-enter negotiations," said Ondřej Rathouský, an attorney with the Prague-based Giese & Partners.

While a guarantee similar to the ones Ireland received is the only likely way around this latest impasse, the lack of consensus domestically remains the key roadblock to any Czech ambitions at the European level.   

"The next step is to have some sort of internal Czech agreement," Kaczyński said. "Then Klaus needs to commit that he will sign if certain conditions are met."

- Petr Cibulka Jr. and Klára Jiřičiná contributed to this report.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com