For all the optimism expressed by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and his entourage at the end of the long EU Council last week, doubt has been cast on the agreement of the new EU treaty after a Polish official said that Poland may want to re-open negotiations.
At the EU summit held in Brussels last week, Poland had stood its ground against the introduction of the so-called double majority voting system.
But a compromise was reached and an agreement made.
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski told a 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 inter-governmental conference due to start next month would “fine-tune the deal”.
Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, which is due to take over the rotating EU Presidency, says it was all a misunderstanding.
“I was present at the summit and I know what was agreed. The mandate is very clear and precise on what has to be done. I am sure this is all a misunderstanding.”
The suggestion by Poland that it may want to re-consider the deal agreed in Brussels has bemused many EU leaders who were looking forward to detailed treaty negotiations on 23 July.
Dr Gonzi said last weekend that Malta had managed to essentially secure what it was after. Speaking to a depleted press corps at 5am last Saturday week, a dead-tired Prime Minister said Malta had obtained a sixth seat at the European Parliament as from the next European election, solidarity from the other EU nations on the illegal immigrant problem as well as an endorsement of Malta’s accession to the eurozone.
But it will now depend on the IGC to ensure that the deal struck in Brussels is kept and the agreement is not rendered impossible due to Polish intransigence. The Polish government’s attempt to sell the Brussels deal back home was undermined by a cartoon showing the Polish twins, the President and the Prime Minister, suckling Angela Merkel’s uncovered breasts on a Polish magazine.
Dr Gonzi came out of the summit praising its conclusions even though earlier Malta had been mentioned, along with Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, Hungary, Slovenia and Cyprus as being very much against the many concessions offered by the German presidency to the UK and Poland.
In particular, it was held that the Polish insistence on the double majority rule whether by square root or otherwise would not have affected Malta’s votes in the council, but the Polish insistence in general could mean Malta losing, again, its sixth seat.
Other commentators were not so sure the Brussels deal was a fair one. Dan Simpson, a retired diplomat, and a member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said it is absurd that the vote of the Greek part of the island of Cyprus counts for as much as that of Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy.
In any case, Mr Simpson added, starting seven to 10 years from now – a compromise to placate Poland, backed by the Czech Republic and Lithuania, but nonetheless progress – votes in the EU will be weighted according to population. “In other words, France and Malta will no longer have one vote each, which was crazy, as crazy as Wyoming, population 500,000, and New York, population 19 million, each having two votes in the US Senate, for example.”