Fresh doubts over Poland in treaty talks

New concerns have emerged over Poland’s demand to be given the right to delay EU decision-making, following publication of the full text of the foreign minister’s statement on the negotiation of the reform treaty.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga received praise at last week’s launch of the treaty-drafting intergovernmental conference (IGC) for her "constructive contribution" after she dropped demands for a right to hold up decisions in the Council of Ministers for up to two years.

But the full text of Fotyga’s statement, which has been published on the Council of Minister’s website, suggests that Poland is still looking for a significant delay in taking decisions and possibly longer than the three months allowed by current EU rules.

At the 21-23 June summit, EU leaders agreed, after marathon negotiations, to revise a version of the Ioannina compromise, to ensure that decisions in the Council of Ministers enjoy the widest possible support. The compromise permits member states that do not have quite enough votes to form a blocking minority to ask the Council to carry on working to find a deal with broader support "within a reasonable time".

Fotyga’s statement says: "In Poland’s opinion, the term ‘reasonable time’…will, following analyses, be interpreted as the time required to reach a consensus."

She repeated her claim that Poland had been told during the summit that decisions could be delayed by up to two years, using the Ioannina compromise.

But EU officials have expressed concern that Poland’s position, combined with its request to include the revised Ioannina compromise in the new treaty rather than leaving it as a declaration attached to the treaty, ran the risk that the mechanism could be used regularly rather than exceptionally.

According to a declaration attached to the constitutional treaty, which was agreed in 2004 but rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005, and which the new reform treaty seeks to replace, the search for a wider agreement should be done "within reasonable time and without prejudicing obligatory time limits laid down by Union law". This is taken to mean the three-month deadline for the Council or the European Parliament to give its opinion on a proposal.

Fotyga also said that Poland expected that if there was a request to use the revised Ioannina compromise it would be accepted automatically and would not require an additional decision in Council.

UK Liberal Democrat Andrew Duff, who is one of the three MEPs representing the European Parliament on the IGC, said that Poland’s insistence on the Ioannina mechanism was "playing to an essentially mythical Eurosceptic gallery". He said that he doubted the revised mechanism would "be functional at any stage", pointing out that since it was first introduced in 1984 there had been only one unsuccessful attempt to use it in a case involving Portuguese sardines.

Duff pointed out that if there was opposition to a proposal in Council or from Parliament, the Commission would "pull" its proposal. "If a proposal is facing such political problems, it’s not going to get through anyway," he said.

New concerns have emerged over Poland’s demand to be given the right to delay EU decision-making, following publication of the full text of the foreign minister’s statement on the negotiation of the reform treaty.