There will be no slackening of work at the European Commission when its mandate expires at the end of October, even though no new commission will be ready to replace it, commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said on 16 October. “If there is no new commission, which will evidently be the case, the current commission will stay as a caretaker of day-to-day business ... We will deal with everything that has to be dealt with,” he said.
EU leaders had hoped to make the appointment under the rules of the bloc’s Lisbon Treaty, but the treaty is currently blocked in the Czech constitutional court, with no decision expected before October 27 at the earliest. That means that there will not be enough time for member states and the parliament to nominate, interrogate and swear in a new commission before the end of the month, even if the Czech court clears the document and Czech President Vaclav Klaus signs it.
Laitenberger insisted that there will be “no lame-duck commission,” since a caretaker commission “can make the legislative proposals that need to be made” on key issues such as climate change and the financial crisis.
Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of Czechs, or 65.8%, back Klaus’ move to place new conditions on ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, according to an opinion poll published on 16 October. But another poll, whose results were released on October 15, found that 50% of Czechs thought the president’s opinions harmed the Czech Republic’s reputation. The signature of Prague’s president is the last obstacle to the treaty’s coming into force. In a last-minute objection after the repeated Irish referendum on October 2, Klaus demanded that the Czech Republic get an exemption from the treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights before he ratifies it.
Negotiators for the Czech government and president have been working out the wording of the opt-out demanded by the president as a condition for his signature under the treaty, Prime Minister Jan Fischer said on 15 October.
Former Czech president Vaclav Havel, an icon of Europe’s anti-Communist resistance, slammed his successor and long- standing rival – Klaus - over his move to block the treaty’s ratification.