THE PRESIDENT of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus said yesterday he got a strong impression from Taoiseach Brian Cowen that Ireland was not in a hurry to find a solution to the Lisbon Treaty referendum defeat.
Speaking to Czech journalists after his meeting with Mr Cowen in Iveagh House in Dublin yesterday, Mr Klaus said his sense was the Government would not press for a quick solution and certainly not by next month's crucial EU summit meeting in Brussels.
Mr Klaus also defended his decision to hold a high-profile meeting with Libertas founder Declan Ganley during his three-day visit to Ireland, notwithstanding suggestions by the Department of Foreign Affairs that such a meeting breached protocol.
Mr Ganley, who is exploring the possibility of forming a pan-European political party, will host a dinner for Mr Klaus in the Shelbourne Hotel tonight with some 60 guests in attendance. Mr Klaus, viewed in Brussels as a Eurosceptic, said he considered himself a "dissident of the European Union" and said that Mr Ganley also had the same dissident status.
He was quoted on Czech TV as saying: "I cannot see any reason why I should not meet him because president Vaclav Havel [the poet and anti-communist campaigner] used to meet dissidents.
"So I will now meet an EU dissident and I regard myself as such as well," said Mr Klaus, who added the treaty was "dead" after the No vote in Ireland. Mr Cowen told Mr Klaus that Ireland was committed for finding a solution to the issue "within a reasonable timeframe".
Mr Cowen, speaking at a lunch in Mr Klaus's honour, said he strongly believed the Irish people wanted to be fully engaged in the development of the union. While stressing the need to do it in a timely fashion, Mr Cowen also said it was imperative to find the right solution.
"This means that we must find ways of allaying the concerns raised by the Irish people. We must do so, however, in a manner that proves acceptable to our EU partners. This combination will not be easy to achieve but I am determined to do so," he said.
Mr Cowen will brief fellow EU leaders at the Brussels summit about the impasse and outline necessary elements of the solution. Speaking at the same function, Mr Klaus said his view was the Czech Republic's upcoming presidency of the EU should not bring Europe closer to the Lisbon Treaty or to a more centralised union.
Mr Klaus said the slogan of the Czech presidency, beginning next January, was "Europe without barriers".
He also argued that the EU needed to be more "open, functional and accountable to citizens of the member states".
At a State dinner in honour of Mr Klaus last night, President Mary McAleese said the Czech presidency would see the further realisation of a "Europe without barriers". "Already Ireland is working through the lived reality of that ambition. We have become home to a significant number of migrants . . . among them are over 10,000 Czech nationals who live and work here," she said.
