Lisbon Treaty edges closer to ratification

The last legal block on the Lisbon Treaty has been cleared by the Czech Constitutional Court this morning.

The move puts intense moral pressure on the country’s deeply Eurosceptic President Vaclav Klaus to sign the treaty as quickly as possible – completing ratification and ushering it into force.

The Czech constitutional judges dismissed objections lodged by a group of Czech senators who claimed the treaty launches a superstate and is incompatible with the Czech constitution.

Issuing the ruling, court chief judge Pavel Rychetsky said the so-called Lisbon Treaty `"does not violate the constitution".

The treaty, which was bogged down in negotiations for almost a decade, has been ratified by all other 26 EU nations.

Failure would send the EU into an unprecedented crisis. Negotiators say its reforms – creating a new post of EU president, giving more power to the foreign policy chief and streamlining EU decision-making – are needed to make the EU more effective.

Last week, EU leaders agreed to Mr Klaus’s last-minute demand – an opt-out from the treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights in return for his signing of it. Mr Klaus said he was not planning to make any further demands.

The Czech leader asked for the option amid fears of property claims by ethnic Germans stripped of their land and expelled after the Second World War.

However, it was considered that Mr Klaus had used the demand for the opt-out to try to scuttle ratification of the treaty, which he opposes. He fears the treaty will hand over too many national powers to EU institutions in Brussels.

Both houses of the Czech Parliament already have ratified the treaty.