Prague - Czech PM Petr Nečas will not sign the EU fiscal discipline treaty at a key Brussels summit tomorrow.
Nečas confirmed this on Thursday after a government meeting. This means that PM Nečas together with his British counterpart David Cameron will stay out of the EU-25 fiscal compact treaty.
PM Nečas reiterated that the Czech Republic will have a chance to join the treaty in the future. According to him, Czech government parties will further discuss the issue in order to clarify whether or not the treaty shifts the authority from the national to the supra-national level.
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"All three coalition parties have retained their opinion," added Nečas.
The EU 25 is expected to sign the fiscal compact treaty on Friday morning.
"Right now, we cannot think of signing a treaty we are not a contracting party of. In order to become a member, the treaty would have to pass through the Czech legislative process and then we would ask to join it," said Vít Kolář, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman.
After Nečas rejected the treaty at an EU summit in January, the Czech Republic was eliminated from the list of contracting parties.
Czech Insider, a Czech investigative daily, also pointed out that Czech is not among the official languages of the pact. Currently there is no official Czech translation of the fiscal treaty document.
According to Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg (TOP 09), the failure to join the EU fiscal treaty was caused by the internal situation in the Civic Democratic Pary (ODS) of PM Nečas.
The issue has thus created a significant conflict between the two major government parties. At the beginning of 2012, Schwarzenberg even hinted that he will leave the government if it does not join the fiscal pact.
Now he expresses his hope that the Czech Republic will sign the treaty in the future.
In addition, the government does not know yet how to ratify the treaty, whether by the parliament or in a referendum.
