President Klaus may NOT chair June EU Council

Contrary to an earlier post on this blog quoting a report in EurActiv, it now appears from an article linked here, titled 'The Meaning of "Common Good" in the EU' that there is doubt over who will chair the EU's June summit meeting. I quote: On April 9^th, the euroskeptic Czech President, Vaclav Klaus appointed Jan Fisher, former head of the Czech Statistical Office and assigned him to form a new cabinet. The interim government is expected to come into office by May 9^th. However, it is still not accurate who is going to preside over the EU Council summit in June in Brussels, Klaus or Fisher.

Up until now, Brussels’ attitude towards the political turbulence in the Czech Republic has not been destructive; on the contrary, top EU officials expressed their confidence in the Czech Presidency and its capability to cope with the rotating of the EU until the end of June. However, besides encouraging the Czechs, both the EU Commission President Barroso and the EU Parliament President Pottering “urged” the government not to sacrifice the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty to the current domestic political tensions. In this context, Barroso reminded both the Czech government and the opposition of their responsibility to other EU countries to ratify the Treaty. More interestingly, Pottering reacted as, “I can not imagine that 10 million Czechs will turn against (the other) 490 million EU citizens.”

Indeed, the above quoted statement reveals the contradiction of the European Union in itself. Regarding the Lisbon Treaty case, the central institutions of the Union and especially the big member states have preferred to put pressure on the rejecting countries to carry on the ratification process.....