Cyril Svoboda. Courtesy photo.

By Cassidy Havens

Cyril Svoboda insists that cooperation and cohesion within the European Union is necessary if Europe is to thrive. It’s a view that puts the chairman of the Czech Christian Democratic Party at odds with his country’s president.

“Europe is to stay together, but splitting is going on,” said Svoboda. “The Czechs not ratifying the Lisbon Treaty is an example.”

Svoboda gave a lecture entitled Implications of European Union Lisbon Treaty for the Czech Republic on NYU’s Prague campus October 20.

Svoboda was Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2002 to 2004, the year the Czech Republic entered the EU. He briefly served as Minister for Regional Development in 2009. He is now chairman of the Christian Democrats (KDU–ČSL).

“The main question is who is the winner or loser [in respect to the Lisbon Treaty], Czech Republic or the European Union? The Czech Republic played a strange and artificial game, and they lost everything,” Svoboda said.

The Czech Republic did not lose everything. The country is still part of the European Union. Václav Klaus, who repeatedly refused to sign the treaty, to the dismay of other member states, still holds the office of president. However, the Czech Republic did lose some credibility in the EU’s quest to become more integrated.

The Lisbon Treaty arose from a need to revise the EU’s constitutional framework, especially after 10 new states were admitted to the union in 2004. The treaty established the creation of a president for the European Council. In addition, two former positions, the foreign policy chief and the external affairs commissioner, were combined to create the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy.

The Lisbon Treaty gives the European Parliament more power by making legislation easier to pass but harder to block. For example, the EU moved to majority voting over unanimous. In 2014, a new system will allow a vote to be passed if 55 percent of the member states approve, as opposed to the current 72 percent.

Klaus asserted that the treaty would take away state sovereignty and that it leaned in the direction of a European super-state. He cited legal issues with the treaty and claimed that Sudeten Germans who were expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II may demand their property back under the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a part of the Lisbon Treaty.

“It was not a legal problem, it was purely a political problem,” Svoboda said of Klaus’ claims. “Everyone wants to defend national interests.” These national interests are what Svoboda believes to be the downfall of the EU unless member states learn how to sacrifice for the greater good of the Union.

All 27 members of the European Union had to sign the Lisbon Treaty for it to go into effect. After eight years of campaigning, the last member to ratify the treaty—the Czech Republic—signed in November 2009. It went into effect on December 1, 2009.

Nearly 30 people attended Svoboda’s lecture, which ended with a question and answer session.