Poland Standing Firm

You know, I really like the Poles for a number of reasons. Their country has had a very troubled history due to a spectacular lack of natural defenses making it a playground for the Germans and the Russians through the centuries. But they always managed to keep their national identity, no matter who happened to be occupying them at the moment. And their example of throwing off the Soviet yoke inspired the collapse of the Eastern bloc. (They have, of course, done some rather bad things through the years there as well, nobody is perfect.) Now Poland is standing firm against a push by the European Union - led by Germany - to force a new "governing treaty" to replace the failed EU constitution. And they are making Germany sweat right now.

WARSAW (AFP) - Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski on Friday ruled out any "horsetrading" as Warsaw continued to threaten to sink efforts to draft a new governing treaty for the 27-nation European Union.

"Starting horsetrading of any kind, outside of the framework of the constitution, is bad form," Kaczynski said when asked by reporters whether Warsaw would give ground on its demands for reformed EU voting rules, in exchange for boosted funding from Brussels.

"No one in these negotiations has proposed anything, at least in an official way," said Kaczynski, speaking after talks with his Spanish counterpart Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Since last month, more than a dozen European leaders have visited Poland to try to convince the prime minister and his twin, President Lech Kaczynski, not to block a new treaty.

Earlier in Berlin Zapatero had said his country was prepared to compromise to find an institutional treaty for the European Union but expected Poland to do the same.

"Spain is ready to have a more flexible position so that we can make progress," Zapatero said after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of next week's EU summit in Brussels.

Zapatero warned that isolation was not an option for Poland, which is bitterly opposed to proposed changes to the voting mechanism for the 27-country bloc.

He was the first of a host of EU leaders to hold discussions with Merkel over a three-day period as Germany — which currently holds the EU presidency — seeks to remove obstacles to its goal of putting the bloc on the road towards a new treaty to replace the rejected draft constitution.

Merkel wants to reach agreement at the summit on a new treaty that would come into force by 2009 at the latest.

Later Friday, the chancellor was to see Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, whose country helped to wreck the draft constitution when voters rejected it in a referendum in 2005 shortly after the French did the same.

Yet the German chancellor's toughest task was likely to come Saturday when she faces Polish President Lech Kaczynski at a castle outside Berlin.

Warsaw wants the number of votes a country wields in decisions affecting the entire bloc to be calculated based on the square root of the country's population.

The double majority method that current EU president Germany wants in the new treaty would give too much weight in crucial votes to large countries, Poland has argued.

Now this is an interesting concept, using the square root of the population. It is actually able to level a lot of the unfairness of an overwhelming difference in population. If the old slide rule is accurate, a population of 50 million yields a square root around 7,000. Plugging 10 million in yields right around 3,100. It would be very difficult for Germany and France to run roughshod over the smaller countries, wouldn't it?  

Other Links to this Post

1. Blue Crab Boulevard » Poland Still Hanging Tough — Wednesday, 20 June , 2007 @ 5:55 pm

2. Blue Crab Boulevard » Germany Urges Kicking Poland To The Curb — Friday, 22 June , 2007 @ 4:35 pm