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ABSTRACT
Trying to be a more efficient, more effective and more transparent international organization, European Union is now processing a forward-looking Treaty, called Treaty of Lisbon. Treaty of Lisbon aims at reaching a better European Union, based on six principal pillars, such as: a permanent European Union President, European Union Ministry of Foreign Affairs, conducting voting mechanism, larger rights of European Parliament and national parliament, reducing the number of European Commissioner and an exit clause for the member of European Union. Those six pillars of new European Union are supposed to be put into implementation by January 2009.
Both houses of the Czech parliament have ratified the treaty, in February and May 2009. However, President Václav Klaus was opposed to the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty at that time. He called for the process to be brought to an end and stated that he was in "no hurry" to ratify the document. In September 2008, he had also stated that he would not sign the treaty until Ireland had ratified it. Prior to that, President Klaus stated that he was awaiting the verdict of the Constitutional Court concerning a complaint submitted by senators against certain parts of the treaty. The Court dismissed this complaint on 26 November 2008. However, the senators proceeded to request the Constitutional Court to assess the treaty as a whole. On 29 September 2009 a group of Czech senators lodged a fresh complaint with the Constitutional Court. According to Czech Constitution, the treaty cannot be ratified until a ruling of the Constitutional Court is delivered.
Beside the constitutional challenge president Klaus, notwithstanding Czech parliament approval of the treaty, asked for an opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. He said that, were the charter to gain full legal strength, it would
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jeopardise the Beneš decrees, and in particular the decree that confiscated, without giving compensation, the properties of Germans and Hungarians during the Second World War. These decrees are still part of the domestic law of both Czech Republic and Slovakia (the latter not having requested any exemption from the charter). President Klaus said that this opt out is therefore a necessary condition for him to sign the document. It should be noted that this argument had been already invoked by right-wing populists, when both countries were ready to accede to the European Union. In 2002 the EU Commission asked a legal opinion on compatibility of the decrees with the EU treaties.
In the opinion it was argued that, were the Beneš decrees enacted today, they would breach EU treaties, but since they were enacted in 1945 their status would have been unaffected. The opinion quotes a sentence on this subject by the European Court of Human Rights in order to explain that, even if the EU, as the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, recognises the right to ownership as a fundamental right, the treaties cannot have a retroactive effect.
