Czechs postpone Lisbon Treaty vote to 2009[fr][de] 

Having survived a party leadership contest at the weekend (EurActiv 08/12/08), Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek in theory gained a stronger mandate to ratify the treaty in the Czech parliament and could have put it to vote had he so wished. 

However, at yesterday's extraordinary meeting of parliament initiated by the Czech opposition, Topolanek instead led his ODS (Civic Democrat) party to postpone the debate on the treaty, which will now take place on 3 February. This, then, is the earliest possible date for the Czechs to vote on the treaty. Even then, the vote is not guaranteed to take place. 

In fact, Topolanek pushed the ODS to prioritise the approval of the controversial US missile defence systems above Lisbon in the 2009 parliamentary agenda. 

The official reason given for the postponement of the vote was Topolanek's assertion that the treaty still needed to be examined by a number of parliamentary committees. Moreover, he claimed that before putting Lisbon to vote, he needed to discuss the treaty and other aspects of cross-party cooperation with the leader of the Czech opposition. 

In reality, it is believed the Czech PM is buying time in order to unify the warring factions of his own party, following the dramatic resignation from the ODS of anti-Lisbon Czech President and party chairman Vaclav Klaus on Saturday. As a result of Klaus' defection and Topolanek's victory over Klaus' ally, Prague Mayor Pavel Bem, it is believed many ODS deputies currently feel considerable antipathy toward the Czech PM and might have used a vote on Lisbon to punish their party leader. 

David Král, director of the EU policy programme at the Europeum Institute for European Policy in Prague, told EurActiv that "while the opposition is very much pushing for the swift ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the prime minister is not exactly sure what kind of support he has among his own party members for the treaty". 

Král also expressed surprise that Topolanek was continuing to explicitly link a vote on Lisbon to a trade-off vote on the defence systems (Euractiv 20/02/07). "I think this is quite a risky game for Topolanek," said Král. "I don't see what incentive there is for the opposition to back the missile defence at the moment. Public opinion is against it by a large majority." 

The risks of this trade-off may lessen considerably, depending on the attitude of the incoming Obama administration to missile defence. 

With additional reporting from EurActiv Czech Republic .