Matt Yglesias

Czechs Likely to Ratify Lisbon Soon

The last real chance for Euroskeptics to defeat the Lisbon Treaty would be for Czech President Vaclav Klaus to refuse to sign the thing. In theory, a lone holdout can sink the treaty. In practice, the Czech Republic can’t hold off all the pressure from the rest of Europe. But all the Czechs would really need to do is delay signing the thing until the UK’s general election, at which point David Cameron’s Conservative Party will almost certainly come in. The Tories have promised to hold a referendum on Lisbon; but only if it hasn’t been ratified by all 27 EU members already. Now, though, it looks like the Czechs are going to give in to pressure to move quickly and head the Tories off at the pass:

The Czech PM, Jan Fischer, has told EU leaders he fully expects his country to ratify the EU’s Lisbon Treaty by the end of this year. [...] The Czech Republic’s Europe Minister, Stefan Fule, told the BBC he thought the Czech ratification could come in “weeks rather than months”.

Good news, I would say.