Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski welcomed the summit deal as a "success for Poland" while his deputy, Roman Giertych, accused German chancellor Angela Merkel of using Nazi-style threats to force a deal.
Mr Giertych, head of the extreme right League of Polish Families, said Berlin's suggestion that it would go ahead with a conference without Poland confirmed a long-held Polish suspicion that "the EU is more and more under German influence".
"The threat of Angela Merkel . . . broke the law by telling us, in the political sense: 'Hände hoch!' [ hands up]," he said, invoking the language of communist era war films where Nazis had two stock phrases, "Hände hoch" or "Polnsiche Schweine" (Polish pigs).
He said his party would consider marching on the German embassy in Warsaw to protest against the treaty deal to "strengthen the French-German domination in the EU".
A member of the Polish negotiating team told Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper: "Europe is German. The problems are solved in a German way: with the crowbar." Poland did not succeed in its summit plan to permanently change the "double majority" voting system. However, prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said he had achieved his "Plan B", which effectively delays any new voting system for 10 years.
"The square root system would have been better for Poland, but what we got in the end is even better," he said.
Polish newspapers and the opposition Civic Platform agreed that it was a mistake of the prime minister - who devised the summit strategy - not to be in Brussels.
"Perhaps another team of negotiators would have achieved more and been more persistent about the square root," said PO leader Donald Tusk, who backed the government's "square root or death" strategy. "Now we have to learn how to build coalitions in the EU."
Prime minister Kaczynski rejected criticism about the negotiating tactics - at one point involving speakerphone conferences with Warsaw - saying his brother Lech had "exclusively" lead talks.
"I barely played a role," he said.
Ministers from the Kaczynski Law and Justice Party called the result a "miracle".
"The square root failed, but the Nice system of counting votes will continue to function for several more years," said Pawel Kowal, deputy minister of foreign affairs. "That's something we didn't count on several days ago."
Andrzej Lepper, leader of the junior coalition partner Self Defence, said he was glad Polish negotiators didn't "die" for the square root proposal. "Our country cannot think of its own interests only and think: 'We are the only ones who are right'," he said.
The leading Gazeta Wyborcza called the summit "more of a failure than a success" for Warsaw.
"Poland has achieved a lot, but the cost of achieving that was even greater," it wrote. "We have alienated all our potential partners in the EU and our brutal behaviour will not be easily forgotten by them."
The Dziennik newspaper quoted an unnamed Austrian MEP: "I am afraid that your government behaves like a bunch of clowns. The Kaczynski government embodies the worst Polish complexes."