EU summit heads for treaty showdown

“There is a broad agreement that every attempt should be made to reach an agreement here,” Merkel told a press conference after the dinner talks in Brussels with her 26 fellow EU leaders.

“We can’t yet say whether that will be possible,” added Merkel, who said work would continue overnight.

Diplomats said those overnight talks would be bilateral meetings involving the German, Polish and French leaders.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched himself into his last EU summit in fiery mood, vowing to defend his key policy ‘red lines’.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski was tight-lipped as he arrived, but many diplomats see Warsaw as the biggest hurdle to an agreement on Merkel’s plans for a new reform treaty to replace the EU’s failed constitution.

In language which shocked diplomatic ranks, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president’s twin, has evoked the shadow of Nazi Germany in perhaps the most intractable row, over the EU’s planned voting system.

Poland maintains that the “double majority” system, proposed by Merkel from the old constitution, favours big countries like Germany, which holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of the month.

“If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would today be looking at the demographics of a country of 66 million,” the prime minister said on national radio.

However after Thursday’s talks Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga said there were propositions “which could constitute a solution in line with our proposition, but more discussion is needed.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, attending his first EU summit, said all 27 leaders had “expressed their strong wish to find a compromise” and were agreed, with the exception of Poland, on the broad lines of a German proposal for a new treaty.

The German text is largely based on the original constitution.

Sarkozy and Spanish and Italian prime ministers Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Romano Prodi were working closely together to find a compromise deal.

“We have decided to firmly push the German proposition. We are all determined to find formulas for the countries with differences,” said Zapatero spokesman Fernando Moraleda.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said a new treaty was vital.

Some officials expect the summit to go on beyond the scheduled two days and certainly Blair sounded in no mood to leave the international stage with a whimper.

“We’ve laid down four areas where we have to have really significant change,” he said as he arrived.

Those areas are foreign policy, the judicial and police system, tax and social security rules, and the EU charter of fundamental rights — which could impinge on British labour laws.

Blair, Merkel, Sarkozy and the overwhelming majority of their EU counterparts agree on at least one point.

They do not want to end up with a treaty deal which will have to be put to the sort of unpredictable national referendums which brought down the original EU constitution in 2005 when French and Dutch voters rejected it.

Eighteen EU nations ratified that constitution and Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik spoke up for them and illustrated the tightrope Merkel was walking in seeking compromise.

“We should stop this constitutional striptease,” Plassnik said. “We’ve gone far enough, those of us who have shown flexibility, who have accepted this compromise as a legal basis for our work.”

Germany’s “reform treaty” avoids mention of the EU anthem or flag, drops the tainted term “constitution” and seeks an alternative title for a planned minister for foreign affairs, all measures to assuage the eurosceptics.

Brussels, Friday, AFP