BELGIUM: Poland softens tone on EU treaty, EU enlargement commissioner urges Turkey to speed up reforms

Polish Prime Minister Anna Fotyga says Poland is generally satisfied with a mandate to reform EU institutions, softening its tone. Europe's Enlargement Commissioner urges re-elected Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to press ahead with stalled reforms required for EU membership. Poland softened its tone on a treaty to reform European Union institutions on Monday (July 23) before the start of formal negotiations to turn a political deal clinched at a summit last month into a legal text. Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga said she wanted to clarify a compromise reached on the voting system for decision-making in the 27-nation bloc, but she stopped short of saying Warsaw would insist on reopening the issue. ''We are generally satisfied with the mandate reached during the recent European summit therefore we look forward to the IGC procedures," Fotyga told reporters on arrival for a meeting of EU foreign ministers to launch the negotiations. "We would like naturally to give Polish reflection on, or our understanding on some of mandate's provisions.'' Many EU leaders have warned Poland against reopening the deal it won last month, which delayed the full entry into force of a new population-based 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. EU officials said the maximum delay would be four months, until the next European summit. EU president Portugal is determined to rush through the legal work of turning the political deal into a treaty, distributing a first draft on Monday and aiming to conclude an agreement at an Oct. 18-19 summit. ''At this moment, what we would like to stress on what was said by our Polish colleague, was first of all, she made a very positive and constructive intervention and the issues she raised will be naturally dealt with by us at technical levels at this moment,' Amado commented. But Amado added there was the need for clarification on a few issues raised by the Polish side. ''There is a necessity for clarification. We will discuss now on a technical level and we will see later if there is a political problem too. This is the process to prepare a new treaty, one doesn't have to dramatise. We know the positions for a while and we will evaluate the situation with this perspective,'' Amado noted. The treaty, replacing the constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, provides for a long-term EU president and foreign policy chief, a simpler, more democratic voting system and more say for the European and national parliaments. Legal experts will spend two days this week examining the text to identify potential difficulties. The opening session of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) was set to be largely ceremonial and the presidency aims to keep the talks strictly technical until early September, when foreign ministers will have a chance to raise any political problems. That will be the real test of whether Poland is prepared to risk the ire of all its EU partners by trying to reopen the voting system reform, diplomats said. The new system is based largely on population size and will give big countries such as Germany more weight at the expense of medium-sized and smaller states, especially Poland. Diplomats played down the risk of other issues, such as the future of Turkey's membership talks, holding up the treaty. The European Union saluted the landslide re-election of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party on Monday and urged him to press ahead with stalled reforms required for EU membership. As he arrived for the IGC on the side of a meeting by European foreign ministers, EU Commissioner for enlargement Olli Rehn said: ''We expect that a new government will be formed swiftly and it is essential that the new government will relaunch legal and economic reforms with full determination and concrete results. This is important to enhance fundamental freedom and living standards for Turkish citizens but also in order to bring Turkey closer to the European Union.'' Rehn highlighted the need for greater freedom of expression and religion in the secular but mainly Muslim country, and said the EU could open negotiations in a number of new policy areas, known in EU parlance as "chapters", by the year-end. ''I will expect that some chapters can be opened during the Portuguese presidency. The negotiations are continuing on the merit of its chapter and policy area, and I trust that the Portuguese presidency will move this chapter further,'' Rehn added. The victory for the pro-European, Islamist-rooted AK Party was a boost for its European aspirations, but big hurdles remain with new French President Nicolas Sarkozy firmly opposed to Turkish entry. Diplomats 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 Sarkozy's call to change the objective of Turkey's negotiations in December before signing up to the reform treaty in October, they said. ends

ITN Source | July 23, 2007

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