Parliament debate dominated by Lisbon uncertainty

THE urgent need to take action to reverse climate change and tackle the economic crisis has been spelt out by the new Swedish presidency of the European Union to its parliament.

But the debate was dominated by issues of how and when the new commission and its president will be voted on because of the uncertainty over whether the Lisbon treaty will come into force later this year.

This prompted the leader of the European People’s Party, French MEP Joseph Daul, to hint that whichever country prevents the treaty coming into being should lose a commissioner.

Under the current Nice treaty there must be fewer commissioners than member states. “Who will lose a commissioner?”, he asked the new parliament. While Ireland has to vote again on the issue on October 2, the presidents of Poland and the Czech Republic have yet to sign the treaty.

As a result, the European Council – the leaders of the member states – have nominated current commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, to continue but they want to hold off nominating commissioners until Lisbon is ratified.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said that ratification of Lisbon will make the EU more democratic and efficient. “More importantly with the Lisbon treaty in place, we can close the chapter on an inward-looking phase in the EU’s co-operation. The time has come to look outwards and into the future.”

Afterwards Reinfeldt emphasised that he was not presupposing Ireland’s acceptance of the treaty.

But in the event of every nation ratifying the treaty, Sweden will have just two months to move over to the new systems and they were preparing for this, he said.