It's a secret....sshhhhhhhhh
BERLIN (Reuters) - Any European Union state that secretly hosted a CIA prison faces loss of its voting rights, and Washington should punish any violations that occurred, an EU commissioner said on Monday.
Franco Frattini, commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, said that under EU law, if reports of secret CIA jails were true, states would face "serious consequences, including the suspension of the right to vote in the Council".
Frattini told a news conference he would be obliged by EU treaties to recommend the suspension to the Council, which brings together ministers of the 25 member countries and is the bloc's main decision-making body.
The comments were his most explicit to date on the implications for any country found to have hosted a secret CIA facility for interrogating terrorism suspects.
A suspension of voting rights for a member country would take the EU into uncharted territory.
It would require the unanimous backing of all the other member states plus the approval of the European Parliament, said an EU source familiar with the bloc's workings.
"You can imagine how difficult it would be to get unanimity on that. It has never happened before," he said.
The Washington Post this month reported the existence of secret CIA jails in Eastern Europe. Campaign group Human Rights Watch named Poland, already an EU member, and Romania, which hopes to join in 2007, as the most likely hosts.