EU:European Commission president José Manuel Barroso hinted yesterday that Poland could lose EU money and solidarity if it blocks a deal on a new European treaty.
In a pre-summit speech on the reform of the EU constitution, he issued a plea to Warsaw to drop its insistence on replacing the proposed voting system in the treaty.
"Please avoid appearing as blocking. This is not intelligent, this is not in your interests," said Mr Barroso, who warned that a failure at this week's summit of EU leaders could weaken the mechanisms of "coherence" and "solidarity" in the union.
The buzzwords "coherence" and "solidarity" are generally used in Brussels to refer to the transfer of structural funding from rich to poor regions in the union. Poland is set to receive tens of billions of euro in EU funds from 2007-2013, although it is unclear how Brussels could punish Warsaw financially if it vetoes a deal at the summit.
Mr Barroso's tough comments came just hours before Berlin delivered a draft outline for a new treaty to replace the EU constitution to member states. The text, which is a mandate to allow drafting of the treaty to begin later this year, did not meet Polish demands to reopen negotiations on the EU voting system, according to EU sources.
But the mandate, which will form the basis of talks between EU leaders at the summit tomorrow and Friday, addressed some of the concerns of other member states such as Britain and The Netherlands. London is anxious to obtain opt-outs from justice decisions agreed at EU level, while the Dutch want to boost the powers of national parliaments to scrap EU proposals. It is likely that these concerns can be satisfied in future talks at an intergovernmental conference, said the source.
Mr Barroso also hinted Britain would be allowed to opt out of EU justice decisions. "Where you actually have different legal traditions I think that is more of a reason to have more flexibility . . . The UK and Ireland have a different legal system from that practised on the continent, that is just a fact and it an important aspect that must be taken into account," he said. Ireland is also considering asking for an opt-out in the sensitive field of justice and police co-operation, given its close relationship with Britain and common law system.
But Germany, which is holder of the six-month rotating EU presidency, has so far refused to meet Warsaw's request to reopen talks on the union's voting system. It argues that doing so could cause the rest of the delicate institutional package agreed in lengthy talks on the constitution in 2004 to fall apart.
Poland wants to change the "double majority" voting system in the constitution, which increases the voting power of big states, to a system based on the square root of population. This gives medium-sized states more power to block EU decisions.
Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has coined the catchphrase "square root or death" in the lead-up to the summit and threatened to veto any deal that does not address the voting issue. Various compromises floated unofficially by Berlin, such as extending the current EU voting system until 2014, have so far failed to be accepted by Warsaw.