Czechs back Poles on voting in constitution

The Czech government is backing Poland’s bid to revise the allocation of votes in the Council of Ministers agreed as part of the EU constitution.

Prague also wants the Charter of Fundamental Rights dropped but wants to include a mechanism allowing the Union to give powers back to member states.

The demands are part of the six-point negotiating position adopted by the centre-right government of Mirek Topolánek in the run-up to the June summit, which will establish which parts of the constitution have to be redrafted.

Topolánek’s negotiator, Jan Zahradil, a centre-right member of the European Parliament, said that the Czech Republic ‘lost’ about a third of its votes under the constitution compared to the Nice treaty. He said that the issue of the voting weights would be "fundamental" in the renegotiation of the constitution.

Zahradil said that Prague also wanted a new mechanism allowing a group of member states to request that powers were returned from EU institutions to the national level, a sort of enhanced co-operation in reverse.

The Czech government is also backing the UK’s insistence that the Charter of Fundamental Rights should be dropped (see left). "There is a fear that it might lead to penetration of EU law into national law because of judgments in the Court of Justice", he said.

The six points are:

• the new treaty should not contain any quasi-constitutional terms or symbols such as the title of European foreign minister;

• it should not worsen the position and voting power of the Czech Republic and similarly-sized countries vis-à-vis the Nice treaty;

• it should strengthen measures for subsidiarity, proportionality and the division of competences between the EU institutions and member states;

• part II, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, should be replaced by a reference to the European Convention on Human Rights;

• the new treaty should allow further enlargement of the EU to take place under clearly defined rules and in compliance with the Copenhagen criteria;

• the new treaty should be negotiated and ratified by 2009.

The Czech government is backing Poland’s bid to revise the allocation of votes in the Council of Ministers agreed as part of the EU constitution.