EU: Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld took on the role of the mythical "Polish plumber" yesterday, meeting British, German and French officials in Warsaw to resolve the EU budget blockage.
Shuttling between separate meetings with the visitors, Mr Rotfeld urged EU leaders not to let "national egoism supplant the values that created Europe. The opinions of ordinary citizens have been ignored by their leaders," said Mr Rotfeld, calling the current budget impasse a "political crisis, not an institutional one".
British minister for European affairs Douglas Alexander said job creation would be the priority of the looming British six-month EU presidency. He reiterated the argument of Prime Minister Tony Blair that agriculture receives 40 per cent of the EU budget while providing just 5 per cent of its jobs.
Mr Alexander added that "politics dictated by fear and economic protectionism" would not create additional employment, a nod to the budget impasse over the British rebate and French agricultural subsidies.
Mr Rotfeld said he liked the British vision "a lot" but made clear his enthusiasm would wane if the reforms would leave Poland with lower subsidies from Brussels.
He also warned that the EU was in a cul-de-sac and was suffering from a lack of ideas for the future.
The Polish foreign minister made a special plea for EU leaders to retire the negative stereotype of the Polish plumber, byword in France and Germany for the threat of cheap labour from central Europe.
French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said it was up to the UK to "live up to its financial responsibilities" to other EU member states or else reduce budget negotiations to a "fiasco", according to the Polish news agency PAP.
German foreign minister Joschka Fischer gave his own warning to the British government, saying that "national egotism" could not be allowed to get the upper hand over the "European idea".
"In my opinion, we have to stand by our promises, even if they are unpopular," said Mr Fischer, reiterating Berlin's defence of the French agricultural subsidies agreed in the 2007-2013 budget.
As the meeting progressed in Warsaw, French interior minister Micolas Sarkozy said in Paris that enlargement should be put on ice.
"Europe can not be unlimitedly enlarged," he said, without mentioning Turkey directly.
Yesterday's meeting in Warsaw marked the beginning of a campaign week by the British government to build support for its budget position in central Europe.
British deputy prime minister John Prescott will visit Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and the Baltic countries in the next days.
Reuters adds: EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana yesterday ruled out an immediate change in the bloc's nuclear policy on Iran following the weekend election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.
The European Union will stand by an agreement reached at a meeting with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rohani, in Geneva at the end of May, he said.
"At that time, we offered the possibility of presenting to the Iranian leaders around the end of July . . . a comprehensive proposal for them to analyse. We don't have any reason to change at this point in time," Solana told reporters in Warsaw.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said in Washington on Sunday that the EU should put forward new proposals to solve the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme, but Solana said he was talking about the same plan to present a new proposal in July.
"The Schröder proposal . . . it's nothing new. We took that decision on May 25th in Geneva, we had a meeting with Mr Rohani and we offered that. That is what the chancellor was referring to," he said.