Romanian Socialist MEP Adrian Severin, the only public figure to challenge openly the Czech president’s demand for a guarantee on the non-abolition of the Benes decrees in the Lisbon Treaty, says it is time to move forward without his signature and to bring the treaty into force.

The former foreign minister and European Convention member notes that the Benes decrees of 1945-1947 are “racial laws” to which everyone has turned a blind eye. They served as the legal basis for the expulsion of three million Germans from the Sudetenland and the confiscation of their property after the Second World War. Czech President Václav Klaus is demanding, before signing the act of ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, voted by the national parliament in 2009, a legal guarantee that the Charter of Fundamental Rights will not bring the decrees into question (see Europolitics3838).

“Demanding that the European treaty show consideration for these decrees is absolutely unacceptable,” said the MEP at an informal lunch with the press, on 14 October in Brussels. He regrets that no one has protested against this demand, which “runs counter to all the foundations of Europe’s ideals and moral standards”. Severin urged the 27 member states not to give in to this blackmail, but on the contrary to move on without Klaus’s signature and bring the treaty, which has been ratified in all the member states, into force. He noted that the Vienna Convention (on international agreements) states that a country that has signed a treaty and refuses to ratify it without valid reasons must be penalised. “Klaus’s attitude is clearly abusive” and his partners should not listen to him.

The only positive point is that, “thanks to Klaus,” the high-level appointments will probably be “postponed until December,” leaving more time to negotiate.