“The president represents the country externally. This is a constitutional authority that he does not choose. This is essentially his duty, which he must perform. And I want to perform it,” declared Pavel on Friday, May 8, after a meeting with Prime Minister Babiš. He repeated to the head of state that the government does not count on her participation at the summit.
Pavel emphasized that if the government decides in June to “remove the president from constitutional powers”, he will have nothing else to consider but filing a constitutional lawsuit. “Because of course we have to protect it so that the president can fulfill his competences given by the constitution,” he said.
Baxa: We do not have an estimate of the length of the proceedings
It is not clear why the government postponed the final decision until June. Foreign Minister Petr Macinka (Motoristé) responded to Novinek’s question by saying: “Now it is being dealt with at the media level. The government will deal with it when it becomes a real issue.”
The summit takes place on July 7 and 8. If Pavel filed a jurisdictional lawsuit against the government in June, the Constitutional Court would normally have only weeks to consider it. The question is whether it would be enough. “This is not a typical agenda of the Constitutional Court, where we would have a routine estimate of the likely length of the proceedings,” said the president of the court, Josef Baxa, to Novinkám.
Even the former constitutional judge Stanislav Balík does not expect the court to decide immediately. “There is no time to procrastinate. Even if a proposal for a priority hearing is filed, the court cannot make a decision before the end of June,” he told Novinkám.
At the same time, it gives the president a chance for success. “If I were still a judge of the Constitutional Court, Mr. President would win for me. But two lawyers, three opinions,” Balík added.
The ÚS can take action even without a lawsuit, Balík says
However, the Constitutional Court could create a framework for the trip to Ankara for the president even without a lawsuit. “He could use an academic statement to give a legal opinion on how to apply the Constitution to this competence dispute,” noted Balík.
According to him, the head of state does not need consecration from the government or the court for his journey anyway. “One thing is if he will go there as a member of the delegation, or if he will go there as president and take part in the informal part of the meeting,” he says.
The presidential office has been speculating about this for a long time, which, according to Novinek, calculates that Pavel, as the former head of NATO’s military committee, could receive a personal invitation from the Alliance or its general secretary Mark Rutte.
Constitutional lawyer Marek Antoš also agrees with such a trip of Pavel to Ankara. “According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, (Pavel) is one of the three authorities – head of state, foreign minister and prime minister – that can bind states in international relations. From the point of view of international law, the president is no worse representative of the state than the minister of foreign affairs or the prime minister,” Novinkám said.
