After reading
my post on Portuguese Prime Minister José Socrates’ second thoughts about holding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Lugundum, a Gates of Vienna reader in the Czech Republic, sent us this report:
This is in response to your articles concerning the Portuguese prime minister’s retraction of his promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
The Civic Democratic Party (Czech: Obcanská demokratická strana — abbreviation: ODS) is the largest right-wing political party in the Czech Republic. In its public statements, it typically mixes euro-sceptic and market liberal rhetoric, although it is often viewed as more moderate on both issues in actual policies.
Please note that the Civic Democrats are also the major party in the Czech government, and campaigned hard on a Euro-sceptic note. Their latest spin on the issue is that the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic should rule on whether the Lisbon Treaty is in accordance with the Czech Constitution.
There are a few sources in English which at least confirm that they are considering submitting the Treaty to the Court. For example:
- - - - - - - - -
…He said the process could be complicated by the desire of some lawmakers from the main Czech government party, the right-wing Civic Democrats, to ask the constitutional court to rule on whether the treaty conforms with the constitution.
or maybe:
…In the Czech Republic, however, the ratification process might be far from smooth. Just as prime minister Mirek Topolanek was putting his signature to the document in Lisbon, critics accused his party — “the right-of-centre Civic Democrats” — of trying to devise ways to delay ratification. The Civic Democrats propose sending the document to the Constitutional Court in Brno to decide whether it’s compatible with the Czech Constitution. This could take a very long time.
However, even if submitted to the Constitutional Court, there is no prize for guessing what the outcome would be. If I remember correctly, I have heard Mr. Topolanek personally talking about submitting the Treaty to the Court, but I’m not sure.
5 comments:
Good. Hopefully you Czechs will save us Europeans. It's also nice to hear about right-wing parties that even look like a right-wing party. Here in Finland every party is basicly from the left or the middle and only EU critical party is True Finns. Sadly their backing is only around 4-5% and they cannot challenge the three big ones. But hopefully in the future they will take 4th position and be able to reach over 10% of votes.
Sludge, Czech government or political parties will never "save us Europeans". We will have to save us ourselves. ODS is the same style party as Moderaterna in Sweden or Tories in the UK. I suppose you are living in Finland and I guess you have the same sort of parties there.
By the way ODS is responsible for the avalanche style immigration into the Czech Republic.
Yeah, perhaps my comment was bit optimistic. :) I was just hoping atleast a small time-off in the form of Czech referendum...but thanks for putting my feet back on ground. :)
It would seem that countries that were under the control of the old USSR, and remember what statism and Marxism/socialism were like, are the most opposed to the EU aka EUSSR.
That should be a lesson to Western Europe.
"By the way ODS is responsible for the avalanche style immigration into the Czech Republic."
I didn't know about that. Where are they immigrating from?
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