[Comment] Poland and the poker summit
PAWEL SWIEBODA
27.06.2007 @ 10:57 CET
EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - The treaty is dead, long live the treaty - European leaders concluded at the June European Council. The circle has been squared, at least for now. The simplified Reform Treaty preserves all the innovations of the Constitutional Treaty but disposes of the pompous ornaments.
Warsaw - the summit result should help soothe tensions, Mr Swieboda says (Photo: Wikipedia.org)
The form has changed, but little else. And the form has changed for the worse, as the Reform Treaty will certainly be less clear than its predecessor which was rejected in the French and Dutch referenda.
One cannot help thinking that not everything is right in a situation in which people express their dissatisfaction only to get an inferior version of the same. It may be the only way out, but the feeling is that things could be much better if at least an attempt was made to move beyond the minimum common denominator and use not only the scissors but also the pen, to enrich the treaty in areas addressing Europe's challenges and citizens' concerns from economic governance to energy and climate change.
The method which was selected is likely do the trick, but we will all watch with utmost suspense the Irish referendum which is bound to be less of a walkover than expected. And we should ask Nicolas Sarkozy what has happened to the proposal he made in his September 2006 speech at the "Friends of Europe" conference in Brussels, namely to envisage two phases in the reform process - one in which a simplified treaty would be agreed and a second one where citizens would once more have a say, when another European Convention would be called and a more ambitious attempt at treaty reform would be revived.
Ballistic atmosphere
The latest summit took place in a ballistic atmosphere, courtesy of Poland and the United Kingdom, who fought bitterly for their red lines. Interestingly, an exercise which was designed to tackle the challenge of the double "no" in France and the Netherlands has been turned on its head by the intransigence of one "usual suspect" and a new member of that club.
The British position was only to be expected as the wind of political change blew unavoidably towards a more reserved attitude on Europe with both Gordon Brown and his conservative rival David Cameron. Ever since it fought in 1984 for the British rebate, the UK has tended to restrain the progress of integration. This time it was no different. A departing Tony Blair did not have and could not have had the same power of conviction as the in-coming Tony Blair.
However, the UK scored mainly rhetorical success with the Charter of Fundamental Rights gaining legal status in spite of its opposition, the Minister of Foreign Affairs changing his name and the specificity of the Common Foreign and Security Policy being stressed. The UK won a more substantive concession by being able to opt-out of decisions concerning judicial cooperation in criminal matters and police cooperation.
Poland staged a second act in the "votes in the Council" drama, which earlier saw it defending the Treaty of Nice together with Spain in the 2004 intergovernmental conference (IGC). Poland was in a difficult position right from the start as it tried to open an issue that was meant to be transferred without any change to the new treaty. First of all, Warsaw wanted to delay the entire treaty reform process.
An alternative voting system was promoted until late in the day which introduced an aura of unpredictability and meant that the government had not fully come to terms with the package it agreed to in the end. Poland scored as much as it could have in a situation in which it was the only member state - not counting the less intransigent Czech Republic - requesting a change of the voting system.
Political fall-out
The domestic fall-out of the poker summit is very interesting in Poland's case. The twin brothers accepted the double majority voting system and other key tenants of the Constitutional Treaty in spite of their fierce rhetoric against it.
The opposition Civic Platform has been put in a more tricky situation given that it invented the alternative square root system and designed a parliamentary resolution in support of it a week before the summit. They were left out on a limb by the twin brothers' negotiating tactic, which meant that the square root was discarded at the summit in favor of a more pragmatic arrangement.
Regardless of the awkward rhetoric of Polish leaders, they have paradoxically contributed to overcoming one of the most thorny issues in the country's European policy, the Nice syndrome and the fear of double majority. It may now be easier to build a new political consensus on European issues. This should mean less poker and more chess from Poland in the future.
The author is presiddent of Polish think-tank demosEUROPA and a former Polish diplomat