| THE HANDSTAND | FEBRUARY2009 |
February 10th Update
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Germany's highest court will today (10 February) begin a hearing on whether the EU's Lisbon treaty undermines the country's own constitution by weakening the power of the national parliament.
The hearing is to last two days, an exceptionally long time, seen as an indication of how seriously the court is taking the challenge.The judges will look at whether the Lisbon Treaty - designed to improve decision-making in the EU - is not democratic, and therefore anti-constitutional, because it takes away power from Germany's parliament.
The case was brought conservative MP Peter Gauweiler as well as left-wing deputies from Die Linke political party.An example given by Mr Gauweiler in written evidence takes the hypothetical case of a German environment minister wanting to get a ban on a particular light bulb.If the initiative fails at national level in Bundestag, then the minister could present the idea in European Council, at EU leader level.Support by other member states at this level could mean that the European Commission is asked to present a lightbulb proposal which eventually could get turned into EU law, despite Germany's parliament having rejected the proposal.
The hearing is being keenly followed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government which has sent Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble to defend the government's case.
Anti-Lisbon treaty party to get EU funds
Today @ 09:14 CET
The new eurosceptic party Libertas is set to be signed off as a pan-European party later today (2 February) entitling it to EU funds, with the group's Polish political campaign starting over the weekend.
Libertas' application to become a European party will be formally recognised in Strasbourg on Monday, according to a report in the Irish Examiner.
The move will entitle the party to EU money. European parties may receive funding so long as they intend to run in the European Parliament elections, adhere to the bloc's democratic principles and field members from at least a quarter of the 27 member states.
Libertas currently has two members from France, and one each from Cyprus, Britain, Greece, Finland, Bulgaria and Estonia.
The party, run by Irish businessman Declan Ganley, has been slowly building up its political network since it helped run a successful campaign against the EU's Lisbon treaty in Ireland last year.
After Irish citizens voted No to the treaty in June, Mr Ganley immediately made it clear he was considering his European options, saying he would like the forthcoming European elections to be a referendum on the Lisbon text.
Over the weekend, Mr Ganley held a mini-congress in Warsaw prior to the launch of the Polish branch of Libertas.
Mr Ganley says he is not eurosceptic and wants to build his platform on issues of democracy and accountability. But the emerging membership of the new political group has several figures from nationalistic and eurosceptic parties.
In Poland, the eight people expected to run for Libertas are members or former members of the right-wing Roman Catholic League of Polish Families party, the nationalist Roman Catholic Mlodziez Wszechpolska youth movement, the left-wing farmers' party Self-defence, Stronnictwo Piast, a left-wing peasants' group, and the deregulation-focused UPR party.
"[The Poles], which protected Europe from the Turks in Vienna and who fought against the Nazis and the Communists," should now protect Europe from the Lisbon treaty, Mr Ganley said at the congress, Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reports.
The Polish army at a battle near Vienna in 1683 helped stop an invasion of Europe by the Ottoman Empire.
Libertas is also gathering members from other quarters. The Times newspaper reports that Kevin O'Connell, former deputy director of EU law enforcement agency Europol, wants to run for the party in the June European elections.
Mr O'Connell was employed by Mr Ganley as a security advisor.
News of Libertas' new political status comes as Irish voters seem to be more inclined to vote in favour of the Lisbon Treaty.
According to a poll by the Sunday Business Post, some 58 percent are in favour of the document, 28 percent against and 14 percent undecided.
The country is due to have another referendum on the treaty in autumn. Irish voters rejected the treaty by 53 percent last year.
Since then, Dublin has secured a number of guarantees on the treaty which it hopes will persuade voters to come out in favour of it.
Press Articles
German court handed new complaint on EU treaty
27.01.2009 @ 17:40 CET
Germany's constitutional court has been handed a second complaint over the EU's Lisbon Treaty with the potential to delay the country's final ratification of the document for several months.
The new legal action, running to over 200 pages, is concerned with economic as well as political issues, which the complainants say are not addressed by the Lisbon Treaty.
They argue that a prognosis on European integration given by the country's constitutional court in a 1993 judgement on the Maastricht Treaty - which paved the way to the euro - has turned out to be false.
Instead, EU integration has been characterised by "continuous breaches of the stability pact, a presumptuous over-stepping of power by the European Commission, unaccountable leadership and dissolution of the separation of powers," say the authors in a statement on Monday(26 January), according to German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
They say that the constitutional court cannot approve the Lisbon treaty because it "strengthens the current practice of dismembering the division of powers and mixing of competences."
The complaint is being brought by Markus Kerber, a commercial lawyer, Dieter Spethmann, a former chief executive of Thyssen, former MEP Franz Ludwig Graf Stauffenberg and economist Joachim Starbatty.
Germany's highest court is already dealing with a separate complaint on the Lisbon treaty by conservative MP Peter Gauweiler. It is due to have a two-day hearing on his complaint - which says the treaty undermines freedoms guaranteed in the German constitution - on 10 and 11 February.
But the latest complainants have refused to take part in that hearing, reports Handelsblatt newspaper, wanting to have their argumentation proofed separately by the court.
The court now has to decide whether it will accept to proof their case. If it does, it is likely to take several months to come to a decision.
This could delay the German government's timetable for the treaty, which it would like in place across the bloc by the end of the year.
To go into force, the charter still needs to be accepted by Irish citizens, due to have their say in a second referendum later this year and be ratified in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, Poland's president Lech Kaczynski has said he will only formally approve the treaty if Ireland says Yes in autumn.
For its part, Germany has to hand the papers of the Lisbon treaty over in Rome for complete ratification to have taken place. The president, Horst Koehler, is waiting for the court judgement before making the move.
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Czech Lisbon vote put back by two weeks
Today @ 10:54 CET 28th January 2009
The Czech parliament's vote on the Lisbon treaty is to
be postponed from 3 February to 15 February because the
foreign affairs committee needs more time to examine the
text, parliament speaker Miloslav Vlcek said, AFP reports."We
cannot keep on postponing this debate forever," he
added.
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Re. Military Affairs
NATO chief admits failure in drawing EU closer
27.01.2009 @ 09:47 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has said he regrets not having been able to bring the military alliance and the EU closer together.
"I'm sad that at the end of my mandate as secretary general I have not been able to bring this relationship more forward than on a pragmatic basis. I hope that after the end of July my successor, NATO and the EU will have a fresh look and see how we can bring the parties together," Mr Scheffer said on Monday (26 January).
In his first public appearance since the Obama administration took office in Washington last week, Mr Scheffer gave a speech and answered questions at Security and Defence Agenda, a Brussels-based think-tank.
He mentioned Kosovo, where NATO and the EU work "side by side", but also highlighted "political reasons" for the difficult transatlantic relationship, as most European countries are part of both organisations.
The double membership means there are limited resources for sending troops to different EU and NATO missions.
"I try to be as pragmatic as I can. So does Javier Solana, my EU counterpart. I'm not going to point the finger at any capital, because I think it is a combination of factors which makes this a rather intractable and difficult problem", the NATO secretary general said.
As NATO approaches its 60 anniversary in April, marked by a special summit in France and Germany to underline the European dimension and the post-war reconciliation of the two great continental powers, EU and American allies remain divided over several issues, especially NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia.
The Dutch diplomat, who worked at NATO during the Cold War, suggested that allies should resume political discussions, the way they did before the fall of the Soviet Union, even on topics which do not require NATO action, such as the recent gas crisis or the Middle East.
It is important that allies get a feel of each other's positions on various issues, he argued.
Mr Scheffer said Europeans should not expect President Barack Obama to wave a "magic wand" over the world's problems and underlined that Washington needed Europe to step up its burden sharing, especially in NATO's main theatre of operation – Afghanistan.
"If Europeans expect that the United States will close Guantanamo, sign up to climate change treaties, accept EU leadership on key issues, but provide nothing more than encouragement, for example in Afghanistan – then they should think again," the NATO secretary-general warned.
For the first time, Mr Scheffer mentioned Iran as part of a regional solution to Afghanistan's problems, echoing the change in Washington, where Mr Obama has pledged to involve his country in direct diplomacy with Tehran if certain conditions are met.
NATO resumes relations with Russia
Mr Scheffer also announced that he had met the Russian NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin on Monday for informal talks and that the relations, severed after Russia's August war with Georgia, would be resumed on 6-8 February at the Munich security conference.
"We and Russia need to find a way to a new, more trusting and more rewarding relationship", he said, while stressing that "no one gets a veto over NATO enlargement" and maintaining his previous position that Russia violated the territorial integrity of Georgia.
Mr Scheffer admitted, however, that Ukraine's and Georgia's accession to the alliance were "not around the corner", but emphasised that they were performance-based.
The ambassador-level NATO-Russia Council, the main forum for co-operation, was suspended after NATO condemned Russia's actions during its war with Georgia as disproportionate.
Quest for successor begins
The NATO ambassadors meeting on Monday also marked the beginning of a search for a new secretary-general, as Mr Scheffer's mandate runs out in July. A formal announcement could be made at the April summit.
Early frontrunners for the top job include Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski, Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store and former British defence secretary Des Browne.
Two Canadian contenders are also being mentioned - Peter MacKay and John Manley - the country's current defence minister and former foreign minister respectively. But according to the Economist, an EU candidate is more likely to be picked in order to secure a smoother relationship between the two organisations.
Press Articles
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