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Prime Minister Fischer also said his cabinet was working with the president to discuss the treaty exemption that Mr Klaus has stipulated. Mr Fischer said that the desired guarantees would have to be worded very precisely, and that a team had been put together to formulate them. He also emphasized that the president was not the sole partner to the discussion, but rather all 27 members of the EU, who will have to reach an agreement on the matter at their October meeting.

The Czech interim government has said it considers the EU’s Lisbon treaty wholly compatible with the Czech constitution. In his statement on the matter for the Constitutional Court, Prime Minister Jan Fischer said that the cabinet also considers the complaint itself to be formally inadmissible, as it asks the court to exceed its own authority, for example by reviewing the guarantees allowed for Ireland in order to spur ratification in that country. For his part, Mr Klaus on Thursday encouraged the public to read the complaint, and said that he would soon release his own statement on it.

The Czech president, Václav Klaus, met with the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, in Moscow on Wednesday. Mr Klaus told reporters after a two-hour meeting that he would not abandon the condition he had set down for finalizing the ratification of EU’s Lisbon treaty but that he wouldn’t “send out signals” about his next steps concerning the document’s ratification. Both politicians discussed issues related to Czech-Russian cooperation; Mr Klaus invited his Russian counterpart to visit Prague.

Last week, Václav Klaus announced he would not complete the ratification of the Lisbon treaty unless the Czech Republic is granted an exception form the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. He said it could lead to property claims from ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after WWII.

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer met with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso on Tuesday afternoon. The talks were supposed to focus on the choice and responsibilities of the next Czech EU Commissioner. But they were overshadowed by President Václav Klaus’ last minute objections to the EU’s Lisbon treaty. President Klaus has demanded a firm guarantee that the treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights could not be used by Germans expelled from former Czechoslovakia after WWII to reclaim property. Mr Barroso warned that Czech interests would not be served by further delaying ratification of the treaty if its constitutional court had no problems with it.

The Czech government on Monday agreed to present President Klaus’ demands at a summit of EU leaders at the end of the month, but only as long as these are his last demands. The Lisbon treaty should take effect at the start of 2010 but first has to be ratified by all 27 EU states. The Czech Republic is the last in line.

Staying with Lisbon, the Czech Constitution Court announced that it will hold a public hearing into the complaint against the treaty lodged by a group of senators. The hearing will take place on October 27. This means it is likely that a decision on the complaint could come the same day or at least soon afterwards. A court spokesman said that the public hearing will be held regardless of whether the senators make a further submission aimed at widening their existing complaint. Czech media reported on Tuesday that the mostly right-leaning senators will submit further material aimed at broadening their existing complaint by the end of this week.

Some European leaders have reacted negatively to President Klaus’ Lisbon treaty demand. Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov described it as impossible to accept or tolerate during a visit to Paris on Monday. He said French President Nicolas Sarkozy shared the same view. A spokesman for the Austrian Foreign Ministry said it was still seeking clarification about what President Klaus was asking for, but if he wanted changes to the Lisbon treaty then that was out of the question.

The Czech prime minister was in Brussels on Tuesday for talks on his country’s stalled ratification of the EU’s Lisbon treaty. The European Commission president warned him against “artificial obstacles”, though it remains hard to see a way around the latest obstacle thrown up by the Czech president. Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court has announced a public hearing on Lisbon in two weeks’ time.

The Czech president, Václav Klaus, may have surprised everyone with his new condition for signing the Lisbon treaty, but here in the Czech Republic the argument that the treaty may undermine the country’s post-war Beneš decrees is not altogether new. Such rhetoric was used by several Eurosceptic parties in the run-up to this summer’s elections to the European Parliament. Many pundits agree that President Klaus has brought up a sensitive subject by suggesting Lisbon could open the door to German property claims. Earlier today, I spoke to political

If the Czech Constitutional Court finds that the EU’s Lisbon treaty is in line with Czech law, the country’s president, Václav Klaus, would have to sign ratification, bringing the document into effect for the whole of Europe. But on Friday Mr Klaus made international headlines when he said he would only do so on one condition: that a special guarantee is included, preventing any possible property claims from ethnic Germans expelled from Bohemia and Moravia after WWII. So, how is the rest of the EU reacting to this latest move on the part of the

President Klaus’ secretary Ladislav Jakl said in tv interviews on Sunday that members of the former centre-right coalition government knew about his reservations about the Lisbon Treaty and its Charter of Fundamental Rights. Mr Jakl said the reservations were pointed out to the government of former prime minister Mirek Topolánek but negotiations over changes to the treaty were blocked by Green Party government members Karel Schwarzenberg and Martin Bursík.

Former European Affairs minister Alexandr Vondra said on the same programmes that he heard of the president’s specific worries for the first time when they were raised on Friday. Leaders of the right of centre Civic Democrats have criticised President Klaus for not stating his objections earlier.