Poland clashes with EU on treaty again

Poland vowed on Friday to reopen debate on an EU treaty deal to ensure it gets the concessions it wants on voting rights, clashing again with European partners who say those discussions are over.
The European Commission said it opposed the Polish plan and its President Jose Manuel Barroso urged all governments to respect the deal clinched in Brussels last week after a compromise to get Poland to drop its threat to veto the talks. Argument now centres on a voting mechanism to let states delay EU decisions if they are just short of enough votes to block them.
Warsaw says it had agreed to a delay of two years in such cases, but EU officials say the deal was for decisions to be postponed only until the next EU summit. The summits are held three to four months apart. Other EU leaders say there is nothing to resolve on the voting mechanism when detailed treaty negotiations take place at the Inter-Governmental Conference next month.
But Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski made clear at a news conference that the issue was not yet fully settled for Poland. "We have to finally resolve this issue at the Inter-Governmental Conference," he said when asked if he planned to fight for Poland's interpretation of the deal.
Kaczynski told a later news conference that it was not a question of renegotiating the deal, but of putting on paper what had already been agreed on voting rights. He said the meeting, due to start on July 23, would "fine tune the deal".
European Commission President Barroso said adjustments to the treaty agreement could be discussed, but "nothing that would contradict the agreement that was unanimously obtained."
Poland had initially opposed the new voting system under the new treaty which is designed to reform the 27-nation bloc's institutions arguing that it favoured bigger countries, in particular Germany. It eventually agreed on condition the new system would not take effect until 2017 and after the inclusion of the provision for states to be able to delay decisions - the so-called Ioannina Compromise.
Portugal, which takes over the EU presidency on Sunday, wants agreement by October on the treaty intended to give the bloc a stronger leadership and a streamlined decision-making process.
Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates said Poland's plan to reopen the deal appeared to be based on a misunderstanding. "The mandate is very clear and precise on what has to be done. I am sure this is only a misunderstanding," he said. German and British officials also criticised the new threats from Poland. European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering said what Poland proposes now contradicted the agreement reached a week ago.
"If so, it would be totally contradictory to what has been agreed in the summit in Brussels and it is totally unacceptable," he told reporters in Lisbon. Poland's tough negotiating stance at the summit cemented the reputation of the post-communist state as the European Union's awkward newcomer.