POLAND:THE POLISH parliament will meet at noon today to vote on the Lisbon Treaty after a political standoff between the government and the opposition was resolved at the weekend.
The prime minister, Donald Tusk, said he had reached a deal with President Lech Kaczynski to secure the two-thirds, cross-party parliamentary majority required for ratification. "I am convinced our agreement will be approved by parliament," said Mr Tusk.
Ratification had been thrown into doubt when opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said his Law and Justice (PiS) party would vote against the treaty he negotiated last year unless special provisions were added to the ratification Bill.
Mr Tusk, anxious to avoid last-minute hiccups, called the deal a "victory for all, not for this or that party" - but the deal appears to be a face-saving exercise for the Kaczynski brothers.
The ratification Bill before parliament today is the government's original draft, with Mr Kaczynski's concerns contained in a separate Bill. That Bill will have the status of a "declaration more than an obligation, with no power or legal standing", a government source said yesterday.
The Kaczynskis claimed that the government's ratification Bill would harm Poland's interests, and demanded additional clauses restating Poland's sovereignty and the primacy of the Polish constitution over EU legislation.
Other proposed clauses addressed concerns about EU voting procedures and the limits of the treaty's Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The brothers claimed the existing Bill would open the door to gay marriage and to Germans' claims for land lost after the second World War.
The treaty deal was reached through a mixture of political negotiation and pressure. Mr Tusk reportedly showed Mr Kaczynski opinions from lawyers that some of the PiS demands were unconstitutional. The Civic Platform (PO) government suggested it could bypass PiS opposition by holding a referendum on the treaty, which has wide public support. PO officials even suggested calling a snap election on the same day, an idea that fills PiS officials with dread.
The party has just 20 per cent support, according to a poll for the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, while support for Mr Tusk's PO has risen to 60 per cent.
It is unclear whether the PiS rank and file will be happy with the deal, apparently agreed by the Kaczynski brothers without consulting party colleagues. PiS parliamentary leader Przemyslaw Gosiewski told Gazeta Wyborcza on Sunday that his party still planned to vote against. "When Gazeta called Mr Gosiewski following Mr Tusk's press conference," the newspaper reported yesterday, "he first introduced himself and then started pretending to be his own answering machine."