Poland Threatens Veto

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on EU governments to be ready to compromise on changes to the EU constitution in an upcoming summit in Brussels.

They warned that, without compromise, efforts to end the crisis over the draft of the constitution that was rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands would fail at the summit on June 21 and 22.

"If we fail again, then it will have very negative consequences," Barroso said at a joint session of the European Parliament with national representatives.

Strong rhetoric from Warsaw

"If we want to have success in this issue, then we must all move," said Foreign Minister Steinmeier. "I have the impression that the willingness to move is absolutely there," he added, and said he hoped it would be the case for all sides at the summit.

But Steinmeier's conviction that "a new dynamic has come into the talks" is in stark contrast to recent rhetoric from Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who has repeatedly threatened to veto the draft treaty because he disagrees with its provisions for how member states would vote on policy issues.

"Poland will never accept, under any pretext, the system that has been put on the table to us," Kaczynski told Polish public radio Tuesday.

Poland fears losing clout

Warsaw is concerned that plans to reform the way member states vote on decisions affecting the whole bloc could cost it some of its clout. It wants the voting system to be based on the square root of the number, in millions, of the population of each member state.

But Germany, which holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of next month, when it hands over to Portugal, has poured cold water on the Polish proposal.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has up to now refused to take a second look at the voting mechanism issue, for fear that reopening the debate would lead to an avalanche of demands on various issues from all member states.

The voting system, which Poland had previously accepted, would mean that 55 percent of EU members with at least 65 percent of the EU's population would be required to pass resolutions.

Kaczynski now says the system is unfair to smaller nations, and has called for the EU to prolong the debate for another year.

"The current situation makes a lot of people unhappy," Kaczynski told a press conference later on Tuesday. "We are the only ones with enough courage to say so, because we are a large country and also because we are the most affected" by the qualified majority system of voting proposed at present.

"We will not allow ourselves to be radically downgraded," he said.

'Delay is not a solution'

Barroso rejected Kaczynski's notion that there was still time to change the EU treaties, as a decision would not be made for at least a year.

"Delay is not a solution. The problem will not go away. Help us to find a solution," Barroso told members of the European parliament.

The German EU presidency has been trying to steer a course through the different opinions of the EU members on how to draft a new treaty that would replace the draft constitution dealt a death blow in 2005 by the French and the Dutch.

Germany plans to submit a list of topics that would be discussed by an intergovernmental conference to EU members at the summit meeting. But Poland has threatened to bar the conference from getting down to business if the list of topics for debate does not meet with its approval.

Merkel on Monday began a marathon of diplomatic meetings, during which she will meet, in the space of one week, with seven European heads of state or government, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the prime minister's twin brother.