GERMANY:Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet Polish president Lech Kaczynski tomorrow in a last-ditch attempt to prevent him derailing her efforts to salvage the EU constitutional treaty next week.
Poland has threatened to veto any talks to revive the treaty unless its concerns and alternative proposals on voting rights are on that meeting's agenda.
"Whether we succeed does not depend on us," said Chancellor Merkel yesterday in the Bundestag. "If we don't succeed, it doesn't mean the downfall of Europe but it could have grave and difficult to foresee consequences for the future of Europe." She increased the pressure, without directly mentioning Poland, saying that "a clear step forward is needed" after a two-year period of reflection. "The problem is in the room," she said. "Smoothing things over won't get us anywhere."
At next week's summit in Brussels, Dr Merkel will present a "road map" calling for talks to agree by the end of next year a revised version of the treaty rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
However, the current draft of the German road map, leaked to the media yesterday, makes no mention of revising the double majority system which Poland says dilutes its EU influence.
Under the current Nice Treaty voting system, Poland is two votes shy of Germany in the decision-making Council of Ministers, despite having only half the population.
The proposed new double majority system cuts those votes. Rather than lose influence, Warsaw has called for a compromise voting model that limits this drop in votes, a call that has been backed only by Prague.
Several EU leaders have visited President Kaczynski in Warsaw this week to try and encourage a compromise.
After talks on Wednesday, Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer accused the Polish government of mean-spiritedness, and of "just not wanting" the German-led summit to succeed.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy appeared to have more luck in winning round his Polish counterpart yesterday.
"Poland, like every large country, has its rights but also its responsibilities," he said. "Europe needs Poland. It should avoid isolation otherwise there will be no union."
Mr Kaczynski said he was still pushing the same Polish line but showed signs of flexibility. "I'm full of optimism that in these critical days of [ June] 21st-22nd we will achieve a compromise that everyone will be happy with," said Mr Kaczynski in a markedly milder tone than that adopted by his twin brother, prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
While the president has said he is prepared for "compromise, not capitulation", his prime minister brother has said that Poland would "under no circumstances agree to what has already been proposed". In emotional tones, he has said Poland was ready "to die" for its own "square root" voting proposal.
Poland's wish is for a country's voting weight to be based on the square root of population instead of the proposed system, which would be based on 55 per cent of member states representing at least 65 per cent of the population.
Polish analysts suggested that Mr Sarkozy's visit might have helped remove the threat of a Polish veto.
"There is a change of language," said Pawel Sweiboda of the Centre for European Strategy. "There's no dying for the square root any more."
The draft road map prepared by German officials calls on EU leaders to call an inter-governmental conference with a "precise and comprehensive mandate" to negotiate a new treaty that retains the substance of the existing treaty, dropping "constitutional" along the way.
Six outstanding issues of disagreement remain: EU symbols and the primacy of EU law; terminology changes; the future of the Charter of Fundamental Rights; the role of EU foreign policy; power division between national capitals and Brussels; and the role of national parliaments in the EU.
"After two years of uncertainty following the problems encountered in the process of ratification of the constitutional treaty, it is clear that there is now a general desire to settle this issue and move on," the document says. "All member states recognise that further uncertainty about the treaty reform process would jeopardise the union's ability to deliver."
The document suggests that the new treaty could contain references to climate change and energy security but without giving the EU any additional powers. It says the Charter of Fundamental Rights should be made legally binding but leaves open the question of whether it should be in the final treaty.