Final Word from Thursday, November 27, 2008
Václav Klaus lost his battle with the Constitutional Court yesterday over the Lisbon treaty, but the war continues. He signaled that another challenge will be submitted, and he called for a public discussion on the document. So far, Klaus has been better at dissing the treaty than the government has been at extolling it. Klaus risks overdoing it, as several analysts have noted, but so does the government if it's forced to engage in a substantive debate. Just a few weeks ago, PM Mirek Topolánek and his team were criticizing the main European powers for their handling of the financial crisis. Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek told Euro that certain EU states, led by Sarkozy, were using the situation to slide through long-blocked measures that had nothing to do with the crisis. He said it was almost like what the U.S. did after 9/11 in terms of limiting freedoms in the name of fighting terror. Such comments make it harder to argue now that ceding more "shared sovereignty" to these same big states is in the interest of all Czechs. [Czech Republic European Union Sept. 11, 2001 United States of America]
Glossary of difficult words
shared sovereignty - the principle that the national sovereignty of individual nations is not lost through greater integration because certain aspects of sovereignty are merely "shared";
to dis/diss - (informal) to speak in a disrespectful way toward someone or something;
to extoll - to praise;
substantive - having a firm basis in reality and therefore important or meaningful;
to slide something through - to secure passage of something without having to exert much effort;
to cede - to give up (power or territory).