Polish President May Not Sign Treaty
Another problem popped up today for the Lisbon Treaty; the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski (of the extreme right wing Law and Justice party), may not sign the Lisbon treaty. One of his aids said that due to the rejection of the treaty by one member state, there cannot be ratification. The president has never been a proponent of the treaty. SLD party leader Wojciech Olejniczak called president Kaczynski “opportunistic”. Ratification in the United Kingdom has stalled as well after a legal challenge by a eurosceptic millionaire.
Poland is emerging as another potential problem for Lisbon Treaty ratification, with the office of the president - who has yet to sign off on the document - beginning to publicly argue that the EU pact is dead following the Irish No.
“There are a lot of indications that…the Lisbon Treaty today doesn’t exist in a legal sense because one of the [EU] countries rejected its ratification,” presidential aide Michal Kaminski told Poland’s Radio ZET on Sunday (22 June).
The EU constitution “ended its life” after the French and Dutch referendums in 2005 he added, with conservative MP Przemyslaw Gosiewski - from the president’s Law and Justice party - taking the same line on the radio talk-show.
“In my opinion - as a lawyer - we have the same situation as after Holland and France…the rules on ratification of the [Lisbon] treaty unequivocally say that after the Irish rejection, it has not been ratified,” he explained.
Read the full article here.
Administrator @ June 23, 2008