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Poland Takes Hard Line on EU Treaty

Will Germany Be Forced to Offer Delay on Vote Reform?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's plans to get the EU's stalled constitution back on track seem increasingly shaky as the spat with Poland over a new voting system heats up. Now she could be forced to delay the introduction of the system altogether to avoid defeat at this week's EU summit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it one of the goals of her European Union presidency to get the bloc's stalled constitution back on track. However Poland, worried about losing influence under new voting rules, has apparently made it a goal to stop her. And after a weekend of intensive diplomacy, Merkel seems to be no further forward, just days before a crunch EU summit where the treaty will be approved -- or not.

The Poles are digging in their heels on the issue of the new voting system. They published an eight-page position paper on the subject Monday, outlining how they want to prevent big countries like Germany from being "blockade powers." Warsaw argues that the proposed new voting system would allow Germany to play a leading role in 78 percent of all "blockade coalitions." According to Polish calculations, Germany could join together with two other large EU member states and one small EU country to block important EU projects.

German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm was pessimistic about the prospect of winning the Poles around. "The problem is serious," he said on Monday. Some diplomats are now speculating that Germany will be forced to offer Poland a delay on the voting system to avert a Polish veto of the entire treaty.

"If I were the Germans, I would offer to postpone the switch for a couple of years, say to 2011, and accept 2013 at the very end as a compromise," one diplomat involved in the negotiations told Reuters. Two other senior EU diplomats said a delay could be Merkel's best chance of winning over the Poles.

Merkel already admitted on Sunday after talks with Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker that it wasn't impossible that the summit, which will take place Thursday and Friday in Brussels, will fail. She said that as current EU president she would naturally do her best to make sure that it succeeds, but that "a presidency can only be as successful as the willingness to compromise on the part of all the states."

Merkel had spent much of the weekend trying to persuade Poland to soften its position on the treaty's new voting system. She met with Polish President Lech Kaczynski at the German government's guesthouse, Schloss Meseberg, near Berlin Saturday and followed that up with a phone call on Sunday. However she made no progress.

"The positions have not changed," she said Sunday in reference to her conversation with Kaczynski, and said there were "serious problems" which still needed to be solved.

Kaczynski too said after the meeting that both sides were sticking to their guns. "I told the chancellor that the solution we have proposed is already a compromise," Kaczynski said in a statement broadcast by Polish television after the meeting.

Fighting for Influence

Merkel has made it one of her main objectives for her EU presidency -- which runs until the end of June -- to resurrect the bloc's constitution which has been on ice since the Dutch and French populations rejected it in referenda in 2005.

Merkel is hoping to get approval for a revised EU constitution -- which will now be called a "treaty" -- at the summit this week. Germany wants the EU governments to agree to a roadmap to allow a slimmed-down treaty to be ratified by 2009.

If the draft treaty is adopted, the EU voting process will be changed so that it will be easier to make decisions in the expanded 27-member bloc. A new "double majority" voting system will be introduced whereby an EU decision has to be approved by 55 percent of the EU states, which must also represent 65 percent of the bloc's entire population.

The new system will significantly decrease Poland's influence -- and increase Germany's. Poland's population only comprises about 8 percent of the EU total of 490 million, compared to Germany's 17 percent.

Unsurprisingly, Poland, worried about losing power relative to its neighbor, is opposing the new system. It is threatening to use its veto at the summit this week to block any agreement on the treaty, and wants to re-open the discussion on how the voting system will work. It has proposed an alternative "square root" system which would base the number of votes on the square root of a country's population -- and give Poland relatively more clout vis-à-vis Germany.

The issue is seen as a potential dealbreaker at this week's crunch summit, which politicians had been hoping might lift the EU out of the doldrums it has been in since the constitution stalled. Merkel rejected the suggestion Sunday that the issue of the voting system could be excluded from this week's summit and left for detailed negotiations later in the year. "I do not see that as an option," she said.

Poland is receiving -- somewhat half-hearted -- support from only one other member state, the Czech Republic. Merkel also met Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek in Sunday before flying to Luxembourg to meet Juncker, apparently without much success. "We support the Polish proposal in connection with the calculation of votes," Topolanek said after meeting Merkel.

Stumbling Bloc

Meanwhile EU foreign ministers made a certain amount of progress at a pre-summit meeting in Luxembourg Sunday. They agreed to drop the name "constitution" and to call the new agreement a "treaty" instead. They also agree to drop references to symbols such as a European flag or national anthem.

Other stumbling blocks remain, however. The United Kingdom and the Netherlands have misgivings about the planned position of an EU foreign minister. The UK also wants to drop the Charter of Fundamental Rights -- which the British fear could impact on their legal system -- from the draft treaty.

Poland formally told the meeting that it could not accept a reformed voting system. "The double-majority system as defined within the constitutional treaty, we cannot accept that," Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga told reporters after the meeting. Diplomats said Fotyga's tough 30-minute speech dashed any hopes that Warsaw might be beginning to soften its stance.

dgs/ap/reuters/dpa