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E.U. leaders agree on reform treaty

Vaiju Naravane

Angela Merkel persuades reluctant Poland to fall in line

PHOTO: AFP

AROMA OF VICTORY: German Chancellor Angela Merkel with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso during the former's final press conference as E.U. President, in Brussels on Saturday.

Paris: European leaders, thanks mainly to the efforts of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat when they reached agreement over a reform treaty to streamline European institutions in Brussels, in the early hours of Saturday.

At a pre-dawn press conference, Ms. Merkel hailed a “good compromise” over the voting system in the proposed treaty, the issue which had prompted Poland to threaten to block a deal at the E.U. summit which began on Thursday.

The trio of Ms. Merkel, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and France’s newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy used persuasion and not-so-veiled threats to get Poland to agree to the system of double voting for the E.U.’s decision-making process.

The European Convention that worked on the E.U.’s defunct constitution (rejected in 2005 by France and The Netherlands but ratified by 18 of the E.U.’s 27 member states) proposed a system of double majority under which any decisions would require the support of at least 55 per cent of member states representing at least 65 per cent of the E.U.’s citizens.

Poland called that into question, saying the double majority favoured large states at the expense of smaller members.

The ultra-nationalist Kaczynski twins, Lech and Jaroslaw, who are respectively President and Prime Minster of Poland, proposed their own formula whereby the number of votes each country gets in the decision-making process should be based on the square root of its population. Thus, a country of 36 million people would get six votes while a country of 81 million people would get nine votes. But no one wanted to do gown that path. The Kaczynskis also shocked European diplomats by evoking their country’s mass destruction at the hands of the Nazis in World War II as an argument to get their way on the voting issue. Had it not been for the German invasion, Poland would have had a population of 66 million people, President Kaczynski reminded the gathering.

The Kaczynskis made voting rights a “do or die” issue for Poland and held out till the very end, brandishing their veto.

Ms. Merkel hit upon a face-saving formula for the hyper-sensitive Poles that allowed the summit to be saved. The double majority will now go into effect from 2014 instead of 2009 and will be phased over three years.

Ms Merkel said the agreement would give the E.U., which has ballooned from 15 to 27 member states since 2004, the ability to act effectively. The new treaty will replace the Union’s failed constitution, which was torpedoed by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005.

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