A long list of tricky demands

Poland has the longest and trickiest list of demands in the run-up to the political negotiations on a new reform treaty to be held in Lisbon on 18-19 October.

Jarosław Kaczynski’s government wants a mechanism allowing a small group of member states to delay EU decisions in the Council of Ministers to be written into the treaty rather than simply being included as a declaration, as the current draft of the text envisages.

But the move faces near unanimous opposition from member states. Poland has also indicated that it wants to secure the same concession as the UK that it cannot be challenged in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for failing to apply legislation in the field of justice and home affairs (JHA) agreed before the new treaty comes into force. The ECJ will have competence to rule over such legislation five years after the new treaty comes into force but the UK is getting an indefinite opt-out from the court’s jurisdiction over JHA. But Poland’s attempts to sign up to an increasing number of opt-outs will be rejected by other member states, which fear a weakening of the EU’s progress in co-operating in justice and home affairs.

At expert group level, Poland was told that it would not be granted this opt-out, since it had not asked for it at the June summit, as the UK did. Negotiations in the intergovernmental conference stick to the mandate received in June from government leaders. A spokesman for Poland’s foreign affairs ministry said that Poland needed time to consider whether to ask, at the summit, for the opt-out, but that no decision was made for the time being.

But Poland’s hand is strengthened in the negotiations by the general elections being held on the Sunday after the summit, on 21 October. So far EU issues have played a limited role in the election campaign. The EU came up in a television debate between Jarosław Kaczynski and Aleksander Kwasniewski, leader of the centre-left opposition and former president. Kaczynski claimed that his tough approach towards the EU has yielded better results than Kwasniewski’s more diplomatic stance. "We’ve gained respect, the status of a country to be reckoned with," Kaczynski said, listing the Ioannina compromise and a clause on energy solidarity, which was inserted in the draft text, as results of his government’s position.

There is a clear charm offensive aimed at getting the Polish government to soften its position for the summit. Kaczynski met French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on Monday (8 October) and will travel to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on 12 October. While the centre-left is the most pro-EU of the three main parties, it is only expected to get 12-15% of the votes. The ruling Justice and Law Party (PiS) is leading in the polls with 36%, ahead of the more economically liberal Civic Platform (31% of votes).

Civic Platform’s position on the EU can also be very tough. The party came up with the "Nice or death" slogan during the negotiations on the EU constitution, which the reform treaty seeks to replace, as it fought for sticking to the Nice Treaty voting rules.

There seems little chance of a substantial softening of the government’s line going into the summit. The question then is how determined the Kaczynski twins are to win the fights on the Ioannina and the JHA laws and how far other leaders are prepared to accommodate Poland for the sake of a deal.

Poland has the longest and trickiest list of demands in the run-up to the political negotiations on a new reform treaty to be held in Lisbon on 18-19 October.

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