Europarlementariërs geven Polen idee om impasse stemverhouding te doorbreken (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Poland's hardline stance on the current EU treaty negotiations has prompted MEPs to look into ways of dissuading Warsaw from opening debate on the sensitive voting system, with some mooting a trade off on the number of MEPs each country has.

The two MEPs in charge of the parliament's report on the treaty negotiations, German centre-right Elmar Brok and Spanish socialist Enrique Baron Crespo, have suggested that increasing the number of Polish MEPs may pave the way to a compromise.

Speaking on Thursday (7 June) about the voting weights in the current Nice treaty, where Poland along with Spain have almost as much voting power as Germany - which has twice the size population of either country - Mr Brok said both states "paid for it with their mandate" in the European Parliament.

At the moment, the two countries - each with a population of around 40 million - each have 54 MEPs. Romania with a population of 22 million has 35 MEPs, while the UK with a population of 60 million has 78 deputies in the EU assembly.

The draft constitution does not set out how many MEPs each member state gets saying only that there will be a total of 750 MEPs with 96 being the maximum a country can have and six the minimum.

Mr Brok and Mr Crespo suggested that the European Parliament would avoid carrying over the imbalance in the two countries' representation in the assembly into any new treaty if Warsaw would drop its opposition to the double majority voting system suggested in the EU constitution.

"We must find a solution for Spanish and Polish members," said Mr Baron Crespo.

According to the draft constitution, while EU leaders can reach a deal on the number of MEPs each country has, their decision must be approved by the European Parliament.

A parliament official indicated that all options could be considered, including lowering the maximum number of MEPs for bigger countries but maintaining Poland and Spain's number of MEPs.

Square root or death

Poland is the only country that has publicly said it wants to open debate on the voting system - with other member states widely seeing this issue as the Pandora's Box that will lead to several other controversial topics being opened.

Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski upped the rhetoric significantly last week by suggesting he and his negotiating team were ready to "die" in order to secure Warsaw's favoured "square root" system.

Under this dpouble majority system decisions are made based on number of countries and votes, with voting weight allocated according to the square root of populations - giving Warsaw six to Germany's nine votes.

The system in the constitution, by contrast, is a double majority based on number of countries and population counted simply, which gives Germany, with the biggest population, considerably more weight than Poland.

With Poland so far refusing to budge on the topic, it looks set to be a major issue at the upcoming 21-22 June summit where EU leaders are to try and agree a new look treaty for the bloc after the constitution was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

Summit is last chance

According to Mr Brok, however, the summit will be the last ditch chance to get an accord. "If the summit fails, there is not going to be any new start" he said.

With a nod to Poland's tough stance he said that if talks on a new treaty fail there will not be any energy security - something Poland has loudly called for - or a text with "Christian values."

Poland is not the only country with red line issues however. The UK is likely to put up an equally tough fight to change other parts of the treaty on justice and home affairs matters.