The Czech Republic offered Poland an opportunity to climb down in talks on a new European Union treaty on Monday but it is unclear whether Warsaw is interested in a face-saving compromise at a summit this week.
Poland is demanding a change to the reformed voting system agreed in 2004 which it says would give big states, especially Germany, too much power mainly at Warsaw's expense. A Polish veto would block progress on a treaty for reforming creaking institutions designed half a century ago for a community one-quarter the size of today's enlarged 27-nation EU.
Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga said Warsaw had received signals of a possible compromise but told reporters: "I want to say explicitly that for Poland to accept the voting system in the European constitution is not a compromise."
Only the Czechs have lent Poland half-hearted support, while the other 25 member states insist the voting reform must stay in the mandate for a new treaty, due to be approved by EU leaders at a Brussels summit on Thursday and Friday.
At an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg, Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra said Prague wanted to help find a compromise between Poland and Germany, which holds the EU presidency.
"As a country in Central Europe, we see Poland as a very important country. We definitely don't want to see Poland isolated," Vondra said. In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair spelled out to a parliamentary committee his conditions for accepting a deal on a treaty to replace the European constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
He said he would not agree to give Europe a greater say over Britain's judicial system or its tax and benefits arrangements. Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said after meeting central European colleagues in Bratislava he hoped Poland would not have to use its veto, but he insisted it would defend demands for re-weighting the EU voting system.
"I hope we will not have to use the last resort, a veto. I hope we will be able to find a compromise," Kaczynski told a news conference in the Slovak capital. But the mere mention of veto made clear a clash is a real possibility. German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said that while differences had narrowed on many points, "it's also clear that there are still some very serious problems to solve".
German Chancellor Angela Merkel failed to win over Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the prime minister's twin brother, in lengthy weekend talks, and ministers forecast a long, hot summit in Brussels probably spilling into a third day. Vondra said he had cleared his schedule for Saturday and expected the summit to run into a third day. Wilhelm advised reporters to pack a third shirt.
Under the voting reform, most decisions would require the support of 55 percent of member states representing 65 percent of the population. Poland, which has less than half Germany's population, has proposed an alternative based on the square root of each country's population.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said a compromise could involve "ways to improve" the double majority system. The Polish delegation circulated a paper touting its alternative as an "Equal Influence System" and arguing that under the reformed voting system, the 14 poorest EU states would be unable to block any unwanted legislation. Merkel stood firm on the voting rights question on a brief visit to Luxembourg on Sunday and refused to shelve the issue.
Britain and the Netherlands have set out other demands - the former insisting a Charter of Fundamental Rights must not be legally binding on it, the latter seeking stronger powers for national parliaments to send back draft EU legislation.
Diplomats say both requests are legally tricky, as are British demands to limit the scope of EU foreign policy, but none was seen as a show-stopper, unlike the Polish problem.
Agreement at the summit could lift the enlarged EU out of two years of torpor and give it a fresh start. But another failure could plunge it deeper into gloom and institutional gridlock, possibly prompting a vanguard of countries to try to press ahead with closer integration.
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