Press Advisories

29. 10. 201013:16

The EU Council stretched into the early hours, a Treaty change is being mentioned

The leaders of the 27 EU countries have started negotiating a possible amendment of the Lisbon Treaty in order to prevent future debt crises like the one triggered by Greece.

“The council has decided to initiate a constitution of a permanent crisis management mechanism and to process the joint considerations of changes in the Lisbon Treaty. At the same time the President of the EC, Herman Van Rompuy, will consult the Member States and the European Commission will consider a permanent mechanism. The December Council meeting will assess these steps and possibly come up with a decision,” the Prime Minister Peter Nečas commented the first day of the summit.

The proposed amendment suggests a withdrawal of voting rights in cases where financial stability should be permanently threatened and the Prime Minister stated that this is applicable only for the field of fiscal discipline. This would mean that a Member State will not be deprived of its voting rights in other areas. Nevertheless, the Czech Republic as well as several other states oppose this proposal.

“Personally, I would prefer a legal framework to be found for the crisis mechanism without any changes in the primary law. In other words, without an amendment of the Lisbon Treaty. These negotiations and such preparations are at the very beginning,” the Prime Minister added.

The meeting in Brussels started in the afternoon and took 8 hours. “We had a vivid discussion. The pension systems were also mentioned, namely the method for counting the pension system reform expenses in the public budget deficit,” the Prime Minister describes the negotiations.

Together with another 10 Member States the Czech Republic signed a joint letter strongly opposing the increase of the EU budget by 6%. “We are convinced that in the time of austerity budgets it is not possible for the EU to represent an isolated island living by its own rules regardless the cuts being made everywhere else,” concluded the Prime Minister after the first day of the Summit.