THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: DUBLIN -- Backed by Ireland's resounding approval of a treaty designed to strengthen the European Union and give it a full-time president, leaders of the bloc said they would start a drive to remove the last remaining hurdle to the so-called Lisbon Treaty -- the refusal of Czech President Vaclav Klaus to sign it.
Ireland's 67% to 33% vote for the treaty Friday was a huge turnaround, reversing Irish voters' veto last year. The change of heart appears to have been driven mainly by the dramatic collapse of Ireland's economy, which made voters less willing to risk weakening the bloc.
For EU leaders who have been struggling for nearly a decade to pass versions of the treaty, it was a huge relief. They hope the scale of the victory will help them to persuade Mr. Klaus, a committed euroskeptic who has refused to sign the Czech legislature's ratification of the treaty, to back down.
Swedish Prime Minster Fredrik Reinfeldt and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said over the weekend they would meet Wednesday with the Czech Republic's prime minister to add pressure on Mr. Klaus. Sweden, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, is also dispatching its European-affairs minister to Prague.
Mr. Barroso said he was also ready to accept names from the 27 EU countries of their representatives on the commission, the union's executive arm. Terms of the current commissioners end this month, and the process of replacing them had been delayed until the fate of the Lisbon Treaty became clear.
"We start already on Monday to start to push every head of state" to sign the treaty, said Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and head of the European Parliament's liberal wing.
Ireland alone held a popular referendum on the treaty; the others ratified it through their parliaments. The process is now incomplete in two countries: Poland and the Czech Republic, which need their presidents' signatures.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski has said he would sign it as soon as Irish voters approved it, though his office gave no details on timing in a statement Sunday.
Mr. Klaus is another matter. The Czech president has never hidden his disdain for the EU, and he has a hero's status among treaty opponents across Europe. >>> Charles Forelle. Alistair MacDonald, Sean Carney and Malgorzata Halaba contributed to this article. | Monday, October 05, 2009
