EU: Lisbon Treaty in Force as Early as December 1?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters at the close of a two-day EU summit in Brussels, “The Lisbon Treaty will enter into force doubtless as early as December 1.” This would mean that an EU president and foreign minister would be selected within the next few weeks.

During the summit, Sweden brokered a deal that will allow the Czech Republic to opt out of the human rights charter that is attached to the Lisbon Treaty. The Czech Parliament has already ratified the treaty, and President Vaclav Klaus promised he would sign it if the Czech Republic were allowed to opt out of the charter. With the opt-out secured, Klaus has said, “I am not going to raise any further conditions for the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.”

Before ratifying, Klaus just has to wait for the Czech high court to deal with an objection to the treaty filed by a group of senators. But the high court has already blocked a similar objection, and it is expected to drop this objection today. EU leaders hope that Klaus will sign the treaty on November 9—amid the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Of course, all this doesn’t mean that the EU has been waiting for the Lisbon Treaty to be enforced before moving forward—as British mep Daniel Hannan points out. “The EU is spending £3.4 billion a year on its foreign policy,” he writes. “It operates 130 embassies around the world, employs thousands of diplomatic staff, and has taken over from its member states the chief functions of a national legation.”

“The EU is acting as if the … Lisbon Treaty were already in force. And it is doing so quite blatantly,” he says.

In fact, the EU has anticipated the Lisbon Treaty coming into force to the point of not even bothering to elect new members of the European Commission. The EU commissioners’ terms expired at the end of October. Under the Lisbon Treaty, the composition of the Commission will change. So rather than elect a new set of commissioners to sit until the Lisbon Treaty comes into force, Europe is letting the current Commission continue its term illegally for a few months. Then the EU will hold new elections for commissioners once the treaty has been ratified.

There is nothing very unusual about the EU blatantly ignoring its own rules. But as Hannan points out, that is the point. “[J]ust imagine if something similar were to happen at Westminster,” he writes. “Imagine how we would react if Gordon Brown were to declare, without bothering to push through any legal changes, that the current Parliament was to sit beyond its quinquennial term. There would be fury, violence, revolution. Yet, when Brussels does the same thing, we take it for granted. That should tell you something.”

When the Lisbon Treaty comes into force, it will represent the free nations of Europe signing over their sovereignty to an organization that ignores democratic norms. For more information on what is really going on, see our article “EU—Behind the Confusion.”