Lisbon Treaty, Czech Constitutional Court (Again) and Ratification

The Czech Constitutional Court has lifted the last major obstacle to the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.

On November 3rd 2009 it handed down a second judgment (a summary and a press release are available in English) finding that ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by the Czech Republic did not violate its constitutional provisions.

This second case was brought by a group of senators after the Czech Parliament of had already consented to ratification. The senators sought a review of the Lisbon Treaty as a whole as well as of the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht.

The Constitutional Court declared the petition to review the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht as inadmissible as those Treaties were unaffected by the process of ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

As to the Lisbon Treaty itself, the Constitutional Court confirmed its ruling of November 28th 2008. We wrote a post about that first judgment here. It held that there was no democratic deficit in the European Union as a whole as the European Parliament is not an exclusive source of democratic legitimacy for decisions adopted on the European Union level. That legitimacy derives from a combination of structures existing both on the domestic and European level, and it held that it is not possible to demand absolute equality among voters in individual member states.

It also held that ratification of the Lisbon Treaty carried with it no loss of sovereignty for the Czech Republic. It stated that “in a modern democratic state governed by the rule of law, state sovereignty is not an aim in and of itself, i.e. in isolation, but is a means to fulfilling the fundamental values on which the construction of a democratic state governed by the rule of law stands [...] The transfer of certain competences to the state, which arises from the free will of the sovereign and will continue to be exercised with its participation in a pre-agreed, controlled manner, is not a sign of the weakening of sovereignty, but, on the contrary, can lead to strengthening it in the joint process of an integrated whole.”

The Czech President signed the ratifcation instrument, the last one. As a consequence, it seems that the new Treaty could enter into force on December 1st 2009.

Comments

[Ralf Grahn]

Today prime minister Jan Fischer is taking the ratification instrument to the Italian foreign ministry, which will formally close the ratification process for the Czech Republic and as a whole.