POLAND: Poland has postponed indefinitely its constitutional treaty referendum with president Aleksander Kwasniewski saying it was "unrealistic" to proceed after the French and Dutch No votes.
The decision reverses an earlier plan to tie the referendum to a popular poll to elect Mr Kwasniewski's successor in October.
"We should hold a referendum but when to do so is still unclear," said Mr Kwasniewski. His successor would choose a date, he said, adding it would "not take place this year".
Mr Kwasniewski insisted that he would still prefer a referendum to a parliamentary vote on the issue, days after prime minister Marek Belka suggested ratification by a vote of members of the lower house, the Sejm.
Sejm president Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said MPs would soon be asked to decide between a parliamentary ratification and a referendum, which would require the new president to set a poll date.
Yesterday, Mr Kwasniewski and his German counterpart Horst Köhler called for Germany and Poland to work more closely together to help solve the EU's current problems.
Meanwhile, British prime minister Tony Blair has put forward his arguments for a wide-ranging reform of the EU budget in Germany's best-selling Bild newspaper. The article, under the headline "EU Money for Jobs Not Cows!", appeared a day after a thinly veiled criticism of Mr Blair from Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
"We don't want a budget that spends seven times as much on agriculture as it does on research and development," wrote Mr Blair yesterday, reiterating arguments he made previously in London.
"We need a future-oriented budget, a budget that creates jobs rather than satisfies special interests." The front page of yesterday's Bild was dominated by a list of agricultural spending under the headline "How the EU squanders our money".
The list included €4.6 million for a "glasses lens factory in Ireland, although it was clear from the beginning that the factory makes huge profits".