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The EU is unlikely to agree concrete solutions to the institutional impasse created by the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty before the end of the year, the bloc's initial discussion on the issue has shown.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy noted that while there may be no set calendar, as "pressure should not be put on a country, everyone knows that there is a deadline and that is the next European elections."

On Friday, EU leaders are to agree a political statement on the situation expected to say that they respect the outcome of the Irish vote and that time be given to Dublin to find a solution. Whether it will suggest in black and white that ratification should continue is still unclear, due to Czech resistance.

An opinion survey in five big EU states show most people want referendums on the new EU treaty in opposition to the current trend to agree a document that will be put only to national parliaments for ratification. According to an FT/Harris Poll published on Monday (18 June), 75 percent of Spaniards, 71 percent of Germans, 69 percent of Britons, 68 percent of Italians and 64 percent of French people consider the post-constitution treaty important enough to warrant a referendum

The European constitution is something else tied with a Gordian knot. That knot is called ratification or rather the principle whereby each and every member state can hold the others to ransom in regard to its entry into effect. Eighteen member states have already ratified the existing constitutional treaty; three more would probably have little difficulty in doing so, but six remain. Of those six it might be reasonably assumed that three (France, Netherlands and Denmark) could be accommodated with concessions and safeguards. But the other three (the United Kingdom, Poland and the Czech Republic) seem to have grown potentially hostile to the whole constitutional enterprise.

Am Ende war es weniger knapp als erwartet: Der tschechische Senat hat den EU-Reformvertrag angenommen. Damit hat das Werk eine große Hürde genommen. Doch die Skepsis in Tschechien, dessen Premier Topolanek den Vertrag einst einen "Haufen Mist" nannte, bleibt. Vor allem bei Präsident Klaus.

Der Senat stimmte für den Vertrag von Lissabon. Mit einem klareren Votum als erwartet: 54 von 79 anwesenden Senatoren stimmten mit Ja. Schon vor der Sitzung hatte sich eine Mehrheit für Lissabon angedeutet

Freilich, so etwa der sozialdemokratische Senator und erste Nachwende-Außenminister Jiri Dienstbier, könne Klaus nur schwerlich ignorieren, dass beide Kammern des Parlaments mit Drei-Fünftel-Mehrheit für den Reformvertrag gestimmt hätten. „Wir müssen aufhören, uns provinziell zu verhalten und Europa als etwas Fremdes anzusehen“, mahnte er. „Wir müssen aufhören zu sagen, Europa sind „die“. Europa sind in Wahrheit wir.“

European leaders are anxiously awaiting a Czech Senate vote on the Lisbon treaty this week, amid French and Germans warnings that EU enlargement can't continue unless the reforms are ratified.The latest signals out of Prague are fairly upbeat that the Czech upper house of parliament will approve the treaty designed to streamline the working of a union which has expanded from 15 to 27 nations since 2004.

European leaders are anxiously awaiting a Czech Senate vote on the Lisbon treaty this week, amid French and Germans warnings that EU enlargement can't continue unless the reforms are ratified.The latest signals out of Prague are fairly upbeat that the Czech upper house of parliament will approve the treaty designed to streamline the working of a union which has expanded from 15 to 27 nations since 2004.

European leaders are anxiously awaiting a Czech Senate vote on the Lisbon treaty this week, amid French and Germans warnings that EU enlargement can't continue unless the reforms are ratified.The latest signals out of Prague are fairly upbeat that the Czech upper house of parliament will approve the treaty designed to streamline the working of a union which has expanded from 15 to 27 nations since 2004.

EU foreign ministers meeting on Saturday (28 March) sought to reassure western Balkan countries on their EU future, but the bloc's heavyweights, France and Germany, reaffirmed their reluctance to accept further enlargement so long as the EU's own institutional future is in limbo. "Clearly there will be no enlargement if there is no Lisbon treaty. Everybody knows it, so why not say it?" French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner was reported as saying by Reuters after the informal foreign ministers meeting in Hluboka Nad Vltavou in the Czech Republic.

But other traditionally pro-enlargement EU states urged the bloc not to shut the door on the EU hopefuls. "I think we have got to make the argument that the European Union should learn from its history and its history is that wider makes stronger," said British foreign secretary David Miliband. Sweden's Carl Bildt expressed a similar opinion.

Germany's debate on how much national say there should be over further EU integration is intensifying two weeks after the country's constitutional court handed down a significant judgement on the EU's Lisbon Treaty. The judgement was initially greeted with relief by the pro-integration camp as it did not say the EU treaty was incompatible with the German constitution.

But the 147-page ruling, now scoured by legal and constitutional experts, is causing strong discussion in political circles, just weeks before a new draft law incorporating the court's points is to be published.

Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hat den umstrittenen EU-Reformvertrag von Lissabon nur unter Auflagen gebilligt und die Zustimmung Deutschlands vorerst gestoppt. Zuerst müssen Bundestag und Bundesrat mehr Mitbestimmungsrechte bei EU-Entscheidungen erhalten, wie die Richter am Dienstag in Karlsruhe verkündeten. Insgesamt ist das Abkommen aber mit dem Grundgesetz vereinbar. Der Bundestag will noch vor der Wahl im September die Karlsruher Forderungen umsetzen. Erst dann darf Bundespräsident Horst Köhler das deutsche Gesetz zu dem Vertrag unterzeichnen.

The Czech social democrat party is discussing the possibility of suspending president Vaclav Klaus' powers if he does not sign the EU's Lisbon treaty. The temporary suspension would require a simple majority of 41 votes in the country's 81-seat senate and would allow caretaker prime minister Jan Fischer to sign the document instead.

The president's powers could be suspended on grounds that he is unable to discharge his official functions because he is trying to act above the law. "There is nothing in the constitution that gives the president the right to veto decisions of the country's highest institutions. Otherwise we could be considered as some kind of absolutist monarchy," former Constitutional Court judge Vojtech Cepl told newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes on Thursday (25 June).

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said the Czech parliament should ratify any fresh legal clauses attached to the Lisbon treaty to help Ireland clinch a Yes vote in its second referendum. EU leaders meeting in Brussels on 18-19 June are set to agree on legal guarantees for Ireland in the areas of taxation, neutrality and social affairs.

The extra bells and whistles are designed to help Ireland hold a second referendum on the text in autumn, after an initial No vote last summer. But it is not yet clear how the guarantees will be enshrined in EU law. The eurosceptic Czech president – a staunch opponent of the treaty – has said that the guarantees would constitute a mini-treaty in themselves. Under Czech law, any fresh international treaty must be ratified by parliament and signed by the president. "Any conclusion in another form would contradict Article 49 of the [Czech] constitution and I could not accept such a proceeding," Mr Klaus wrote to Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer in a letter released on Wednesday (17 June). Mr Fischer rejected the request, saying a government agreement would be enough. "[The guarantees] are not an international treaty of a political nature ...but an international treaty of a governmental type which does not require the powers of the head of state to be concluded," he wrote on the government website.

Slovenia is expected to unblock Croatia's EU accession talks at a ministerial meeting today (15 June). The two countries have clashed for several months over disputed territories on the Adriatic coast.

Background: During the French EU Presidency, Slovenia blocked the opening of nine out of ten negotiating chapters with Zagreb due to an unresolved border dispute (EurActiv 18/12/08).  The Czech Presidency has so far failed to make any progress in the negotiations. Indeed, the EU recently postponed an accession conference after the two countries had failed to show any sign of conciliation (EurActiv 24/04/09).  Diplomats have serious doubts about the viability of Croatia's objective of wrapping up accession talks by the end of the year (so as to be ready to join the bloc in 2010) if the bilateral dispute is not resolved soon (see EurActiv LinksDossier on 'EU-Croatia' relations).  The border dispute between Slovenia and Croatia concerns small pockets of land along the Adriatic coast, which could prove important if accompanied by exclusive access rights to deep-sea zones. 

However, this may not be the end of the region's problems, as similar obstacles are expected to emerge in the Western Balkan accession process as a whole, diplomats told EurActiv.  EU diplomats said the lack of a clearly defined border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina could soon create problems "one hundred times worse" than the current dispute between Ljubljana and Zagreb, in which the European Commission has invested a huge mediation effort. 

Negotiations on Ireland's guarantees on the EU Lisbon Treaty are going down to the wire with still no text on the table exactly a week before EU leaders are supposed to sign up to them. EU ambassadors were meant to gather Thursday (11 June) to have a special meeting on the matter but agreeing wording that does not make any other member state jittery but keeps Ireland's electorate happy is proving more difficult than first thought.

Ireland is looking for special guarantees on ethical issues, tax sovereignty and its neutral status. It wants them signed off by EU leaders at their summit next week and a commitment made to make them binding as quickly as possible. The idea was to tack them on to the next available treaty - possibly Croatia's accession treaty - so that they could be ratified by national parliaments across the bloc. However, member states fear this could open the door to a further delay in the getting the text ratified, particularly if anything in the text catches the idea of eurosceptic Czech President Vaclav Klaus.

Ireland is busy working on legal wording to make the Lisbon Treaty more palatable to Irish voters, but its EU partners have raised concerns about the scope of the texts and some impatience at the pace of the work. Last week, officials from Dublin met representatives from the 26 other member states to shed some light on what kind of wording Ireland is looking for in order to ensure the greatest chance that its citizens will vote "Yes" the second referendum on the treaty, scheduled for autumn.

But the reason for the wariness among other capitals is that these texts will take the form of legally-binding protocols, which will be attached to the first legal vehicle available to get them ratified. At the moment, the talk is of Croatia's accession treaty, which will have to pass through all 27 parliaments of the EU. "We want to make sure it is very specific to Ireland, so we do not get asked why we haven't got guarantees on certain issues," said one diplomat.