Germans seek to oust Czech president Vaclav Klaus over EU treaty

Bojan Pancevski
Times Online
October 11, 2009


CTK/AP) Sudeten Germans leaving the Czech Republic in 1946
Bojan Pancevski in Brussels

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Revelling in the fuss he was causing, Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, calmly tucked into a plate of steamed shellfish on the terrace of the elegant Adriatic hotel in the Albanian seaside resort of Durres last week.

In faraway Brussels furious diplomats were calling for his impeachment and even his country’s expulsion from the European Union because of his obstinate refusal to sign the Lisbon treaty. Klaus, now the only European leader holding out against ratifying the document, made it clear he did not give a damn.

European leaders were told he was not available to take their calls. The Eurosceptic president and his wife Livia were completing a brief tour of the Balkan country where Klaus, 68, attended the launch of the Albanian edition of his controversial book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, which argues there is no such thing as man-made global warming.

The trip had clearly been planned to coincide with the diplomatic blitz that Brussels launched after last weekend’s referendum in Ireland, which appeared to remove the final hurdle to ratification. Klaus seemed to have other ideas.

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Lech Kaczynski, the Polish president, left Klaus further isolated by signing the treaty into law yesterday. “The EU remains a union of nation states, a strict union, and let it remain so,â€