POLAND:Talks to agree a new EU treaty next month could stall before they start after Poland announced yesterday it plans to reopen a voting deal agreed last week in Brussels.
Polish officials said yesterday that they dropped their threatened veto to the intergovernmental conference (IGC) after reaching a "gentlemen's agreement" to strengthen a mechanism to delay EU decisions.
The mechanism, known as the "Ioannina Compromise", allows for a decision to be stalled if it is opposed by a group of countries just short of a blocking minority.
Poland says it received assurances that the mechanism could be beefed up to create a two-year delay. EU officials say it only allows a delay until the next summit, a maximum wait of four months.
"Poland will come back to the Ioannina blocking mechanism at the intergovernmental conference, of course, because the two years are guaranteed to us by a political agreement," a senior Polish official close to prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said yesterday.
Mr Kaczynski said he was looking forward to "fine-tuning the deal" at the July conference.
"We have to finally resolve this issue at the intergovernmental conference," he said, adding the talks would put on paper what had already been agreed in Brussels.
German officials who negotiated last week's deal said yesterday that the voting weights discussion was over and that there would be no more fine-tuning.
"Any verbal agreements are not known to us," said a senior government official.
"The Brussels plan for an IGC was agreed unanimously. What counts is what's written - verbal agreements, even if they were given, do not."
The incoming Portuguese EU presidency dismissed the Polish claim yesterday and warned Warsaw not to unpick last week's summit compromise. At the same time, prime minister José Socrates said he was sure the issue was a "misunderstanding". "I was present at the summit and I know what was agreed," he said. "The mandate is very clear and precise on what has to be done."
Last Saturday's summit deal, presented after 30 hours of negotiations in the Brussels dawn, agreed to begin a three-year transition period to the new "double majority" in 2014.
The transition period was a concession to Poland, which was anxious to preserve the influence it is granted under current voting rules. Faced with resistance yesterday, Polish officials told Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper legal officials were poring over the agreement. "In the end, it could come to a new veto threat from Poland," the official told the newspaper.