June 13, 2008: Premier Mire Topolánek Opens Conference on Voting in the EU Council

On Friday, June 13, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. Czech Premier Mirek Topolánek will open an international scholarly conference devoted to alternative models of voting in the Council of the European Union.

The aim of the conference is to contribute to discussions on the decision-making process in the Council whose evolution has not yet been finished even after the signing of the Lisbon Treaty. The conference entitled “Voting Systems in the Council“ is held by the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic under the aegis of Premier Mirek Topolánek, in conjunction with the Natolin European Centre and with the support of the fraction EPP-ED. Speakers at the conference will include associate professor Bìla Plechanovová who has been devoting herself to this issue in the Czech Republic for a long time; Ewa Osniecka-Tamecka, Vice-Chancellor of the Natolin European Centre, one of the two main Polish negotiators on the Lisbon Treaty; Wojciech S³omczyñski, co-author of the so-called Jagellon compromise, an alternative model for determining voting powers for the individual member states in the Council. The fourth speaker will be Moshé Machover, a mathematician at the London School of Economics who has been studying the relationship of voting powers and voting impact of the member states in the Council on a long-term basis. The conference will be chaired by Eurodeputy for EPP-ED Jan Zahradil, who was one of the two chief negotiators of the Czech Republic on the Lisbon Treaty (together with Jiøí Šedivý).