EU SUMMIT: The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, piled fresh pressure on Poland yesterday to back a new European Union constitution, saying new members should not make their first votes in the bloc a veto.
In an interview with German television after meeting President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland in Berlin, Mr Schröder said he hoped Warsaw would not vote against the draft.
"One cannot become a member of the European Union and want to start this membership with a veto," he told ARD television. "I hope the Polish side will decide to agree with it."
Mr Kwasniewski cast doubt on hopes of a compromise, telling reporters after the meeting: "If Germany's position is unchangeable, then our position is also unchangeable."
Poland, which is supported by Spain, has less than half of Germany's population, as has Spain. Both want to keep a formula giving them almost as many votes as Germany, Britain, France and Italy.
"Everyone who wants something else has to explain why he wants that," Mr Schröder said. "And if they can't do that, they should think about whether they want to take responsibility for the failure.
"Naturally, there can be marginal changes, and that will be the case, but in the central question it would be a setback for Europe if there were changes."
The German Foreign Minister said he would prefer to delay a new EU constitution rather than adopt a weak text at the summit.
"No result this year is in our opinion clearly better than a bad result that would delay or prevent the work of Europe for years," Mr Joschka Fischer told the German parliament to applause.
"Whether we come to a positive result in the coming days - and this is no diplomatic formulation - is really open."
Mr Fischer said Germany wanted to protect the "historic compromise" struck by a 105-member European Convention which drafted a constitution and proposed that EU decision-making take greater account of population sizes as the bloc expands east.
"If the summit in Brussels shows that the readiness to make the necessary integration progress is not yet there in an EU of 25, then it would be better to continue to negotiate," he said.
"We must now stop the member-states reopening the ambitious result of the Convention. Falling back on to the Nice Treaty would inevitably mean that the whole European integration process would suffer lasting political damage," said Mr Fischer.
Additional reporting by Reuters