Poland backed down on a key objection to a treaty to reform European Union institutions on Monday, allowing the bloc to proceed with negotiations to turn the political deal reached last month into a legal text.
The treaty, replacing the constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, provides for a long-term EU president and a stronger foreign policy chief, a simpler, more democratic decision-making procedure and more say for the European and national parliaments.
Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga dropped Warsaw's demand that groups of countries should be able to delay any contentious EU decision for up to two years. She asked instead that the treaty formally incorporate a formula allowing a "reasonable time", which EU officials say means a maximum of four months. "After an initial scrutiny of the draft reform treaty we see that solutions proposed by ... the (EU) presidency are close to our expectations," Fotyga told a news conference after a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
"We will not insist on an initial requirement of two years." Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso welcomed her statement, saying they were confident the final text of the treaty would be agreed in October as planned and ratified by mid-2009.
Fotyga said that according to Polish experts, the deal reached on the voting system in the 27-nation bloc could make it possible to delay decisions for longer by invoking the procedure more than once on the same issue.
That statement raised the possiblity of a clash among lawyers who will now work on the treaty text before ministers revisit the issue in early September. Poland put up the strongest resistance to a new population-based voting system, saying it would lead to Europe being dominated by Germany at the expense of smaller countries.
Fotyga also reserved the right for Poland to join Britain in opting out of a legally binding European Charter of Fundamental Rights but said the exemption would not affect workers' rights.
Ireland said it was no longer seeking an opt-out after trade unions and the media criticised Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's handling of the treaty, which Dublin is obliged constitutionally to put to a referendum.
EU president Portugal distributed a first 145-page draft of the treaty, plus protocols and annexe declarations, in French on Monday and reaffirmed its aim to conclude an agreement at an October 18-19 summit.
Amado called Fotyga's comments "very positive and constructive" while Barroso said Europeans were sick of years of institutional wrangling and wanted the EU to get on with delivering results for citizens. Many EU leaders have warned Poland against reopening the deal it won last month, which delayed the full entry into force of the new voting system until 2017 and set a lower threshold for countries to delay decisions after that.
The ink on the summit deal was barely dry when Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Warsaw had won the right for groups of states short of a blocking minority to postpone decisions for up to two years.
Diplomats played down the risk of other issues, such as the future of Turkey's membership talks, holding up the treaty. They said Britain, one of Ankara's strongest supporters, wanted the treaty concluded as soon as possible to face down demands by Eurosceptics for a referendum and lay the issue to rest before a possible early general election.
Only Sweden may demand assurances that France will not press President Nicolas Sarkozy's call to change the objective of Turkey's negotiations in December before signing up to the reform treaty in October, they said.
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