BELGIUM: Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski visits European Commission

The president of the European Commission urged Poland on Wednesday (April 18) to overcome its concerns about the European Union's stalled constitution and to back efforts to find a new treaty on the future of the bloc. He also urged Russia to end a Polish meat ban. Poland, along with Britain and the Czech Republic, is widely seen as the most sceptical among EU countries towards any quick agreement on a treaty to replace the bloc's constitution rejected two years ago in Dutch and French referendums. Kaczynski said Warsaw too wanted a new treaty for a more effective Europe, but it did not accept the reformed voting system in the constitution which he said would give it far less power than existing arrangements under the 2000 Treaty of Nice. EU president Germany wants the 27-nation bloc's leaders to approve a tight timetable in June for negotiating a simplified treaty to replace the constitution rejected in 2005 by French and Dutch voters, with new arrangements to be in place by 2009. Kaczynski said the voting system, like other institutional reforms, was up for negotiation. No other EU member state has supported Poland's call for an alternative weighted voting system based on the square root of the population of each country. Barroso also congratulated Poland and Ukraine on their joint win to host the European Football Championship 2012, and later said Brussels had given Russia enough information on its concerns about Polish sanitary standards for Moscow to lift a meat import ban.

ITN Source | April 19, 2007

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