EU:Germany has the backing of nearly all EU states in its standoff with Poland, writes Derek Scally
All summit eyes are on German chancellor Angela Merkel and Polish president Lech Kaczynski this morning when they meet for bilateral talks to broker a deal on voting influence in the union.
The Polish and German leaders have met once already this week - on the cover of Der Spiegel magazine - showing Mr Kaczynski and his prime minister brother Jaroslaw quite literally taking Dr Merkel for a ride.
The cover headline, "How Poland is annoying all of Europe", overlooks one important fact: although the outcome of the EU vote-weighting row affects every member of the 27-state union, the dispute itself has become a German-Polish row, with history and personality generating friction on both sides.
Berlin knows that, to a large extent, dramatic public pronouncements from Polish officials, going back to the second World War and beyond, are a sideshow for domestic consumption. Their battle cry, "Square Root or Death!", is based on Poland's alternative voting proposal and is another episode in the Kaczynski twins' war on the recent Polish past, in particular every democratically elected government since 1990.
In the Kaczynski view, these governments were filled with forelock-tugging diplomatic naifs who meekly accepted everything the EU - read Germany - put on the table in accession talks.
Critics point out that, to accept this view of events, one has to airbrush out the 2004 standoff with Poland that ran along similar lines - "Nice or Death!" - and ended when Warsaw won concessions and signed up to the double majority system.
The Kaczynskis have prepared themselves for this summit so that, deal or no deal, they can sell themselves to Polish voters as proud nationalists who mounted a valiant defence of their interests.
They did so by framing the row about complicated mathematical voting models, which few Poles understand, as a standoff in historical terms.
To make the point, President Kaczynski gave a speech in Warsaw's national gallery before a painting depicting the 1410 victory of Polish-Lithuanian troops over the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Tannenberg.
One of medieval Europe's greatest battles, it ended German supremacy in the region.
The idea that this week's summit is a Battle of Brussels may just be Polish political packaging, but historical analogies loom large in the Polish consciousness. As boys, the Kaczynskis' favourite bedtime stories were bloody tales of the heroic, doomed 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis.
Although ordinary Poles are largely pro-EU, the Kaczynskis have calculated that there is still domestic political gain to be had in portraying the EU as a German plaything, and the proposed double majority system - and the influence boost it gives Germany - as a new way for Berlin to pursue its megalomaniac plans.
Amused Berlin officials say that the same Polish officials who make emotional public pronouncements are moderate and conciliatory in private talks.
German officials are confident that the Kaczynski twins realise that, despite their differences, Angela Merkel is someone they can deal with.
Dr Merkel, for her part, has made a point of not isolating the Kaczynskis in this row: the Poles are doing a good enough job of that on their own.
Justified or not, the way they have attempted to reopen the issue has confirmed in many European capitals Poland's reputation as a braking force and has generated little sympathy for its actual concern over vote weighting.
Still, Dr Merkel has been determined to build trust with Warsaw of late, spending time with President Kaczynski and delivering a very personal speech at Warsaw University in March.
She said that without Poland's Solidarity movement - of which the Kaczynskis were members - the Berlin Wall might not have fallen and she, an East German pastor's daughter, would not be chancellor.
But the German leader's conciliatory approach should not be confused with a lack of determination. She and her officials view this summit as the last hurdle for the double majority system which clawed back voting concessions made at the notorious Nice summit.
Then, after hours of fruitless horse-trading, exhausted chancellor Gerhard Schröder agreed to a voting system that gave middle-sized countries voting weights vastly beyond their population size.
After joining the EU, the Poles felt this over-representation was compensation for its losses under Nazi occupation and for being left by western Europe behind the Iron Curtain.
This morning's meeting is about convincing them to agree otherwise.
Despite the burden of its difficult past with Poland, Berlin is looking forward, not backward, in the voting standoff, secure in the knowledge that it has the backing of almost all EU members.
The summit outcome will define the approach Germany adopts with its eastern neighbour in the near future.
A failure could prompt the kind of exasperation that the august Frankfürter Allgemeine newspaper expressed this week when Polish officials said they would rather "die" than lose EU influence: "So die, then!"