Ocnus.Net
Doubts Emerging over Poland's Lisbon Ratification
By PHILIPPA RUNNER, EU Observer 23/6/08
Jun 23, 2008 - 10:29:10 AM
"There are a
lot of indications that...the Lisbon Treaty today doesn't exist in a legal
sense because one of the [EU] countries rejected its ratification,"
presidential aide Michal Kaminski told Poland's Radio ZET on Sunday (22 June).
The EU constitution
"ended its life" after the French and Dutch referendums in 2005 he
added, with conservative MP Przemyslaw Gosiewski - from the president's Law and
Justice party - taking the same line on the radio talk-show.
"In my opinion
- as a lawyer - we have the same situation as after Holland and France...the
rules on ratification of the [Lisbon] treaty unequivocally say that after the
Irish rejection, it has not been ratified," he explained.
The Polish
parliament approved Lisbon in April with prime minister Donald Tusk at last
Friday's EU summit calling for EU-wide ratification to continue, but saying he
was "not responsible" for Polish president Lech Kaczynski's decision.
Nine Polish liberal
and Socialist MEPs in an open letter last week also urged Mr Kaczynski to sign.
But socialist SLD party leader Wojciech Olejniczak warned in Sunday's radio
debate that the president may not play ball.
"Let's not
deceive ourselves, the president won't sign this treaty. The president is an
opportunist," he said.
The presidential
signature is also conditional on finalising a new "competencies" deal
with the government which would give both parliament and Mr Kaczynski's office
an oversight role on future EU negotiations.
Fifteen out of 27
EU states have so far definitively ratified the Lisbon pact, with the Czech
republic the biggest opponent to continuing the process after the Irish voted
No in the only referendum on the text.
UK ratification was
called into question late last week after London's High Court warned the treaty
cannot become law until it rules on a legal challenge by eurosceptic
millionaire Stuart Wheeler, despite the British queen having given her
"Royal Assent."
Europe needs
clarity
Commenting on the
situation in German magazine Bild at the weekend, Luxembourg leader Jean-Claude
Juncker said in future, Europe-wide referendums may be needed to give
"clarity" to the mandate for further EU integration.
"I am open
towards the idea of Europe-wide referendums...it could become a reasonable
tool, also for the basic question: 'Do you want to be a member of the European
Union and for this renounce the needed [national] competences?'" he said.
"We would get
clarity. In the EU, are 50 per cent of the people convinced that we need more
Europe?"
The latest opinion
surveys in regional French newspapers gave contradictory indications on the
feelings in one of Europe's largest founding nations, three years after the EU
constitution debacle.
A CSA poll for Le
Parisien/Aujourd'hui en France this weekend showed 56 percent of people would
vote Yes for Lisbon if they had the chance, while an IFOP survey for the
Sud-Ouest journal said 53 percent would vote No.
Source: Ocnus.net 2008