Sarkozy increases treaty pressure

THE pressure on Ireland to ratify the Lisbon treaty increased yesterday with French president Nicolas Sarkozy saying the EU cannot continue without the reforms in the document.

At the same time, the prime minister of the eurosceptic Czech government, which suffered a blow at the polls this weekend, said he believed they could ratify the treaty before the end of the year. This is expected to leave Ireland as the only country not to do so.

France holds the EU presidency and Mr Sarkozy told the European Parliament yesterday that the economic and the Georgian-Russian crisis had shown that the EU cannot continue with the system of rotating presidencies every six months.