A wasted vote

At the end of October Lech Kaczyński - the newly elected president of Poland - said he would hold a referendum to decide whether Poland should join the eurozone. To everybody's astonishment - especially that of EU officials - Kaczyński said that the referendum could happen in 2010.

"This whole statement looks very patriotic, but at second glance one may find that it is pure deception," said Civic Platform deputy Zbigniew Chlebowski. "Some politicians in Poland want to have the Treaty [of Accession] revised, it doesn't take much to see a pattern here."

European officials have now started to remind Poland that it doesn't have a choice on whether to join the eurozone. The conditions codified in the Treaty of Maastricht were signed by Poland without any opt-out clauses on the single currency (unlike the UK for example).

Lately the trading bloc's officials have become more determined in their criticism. "No state will be forced to join the eurozone if it doesn't feel ready," the EU's Commissioner for Monetary Affairs, Joaquin Almunia, told Gazeta Wyborcza recently. "This is the obligation of every member state, who signed the Maastricht Treaty without opt-out clauses."

Many Polish authorities do not agree with the new Polish president's controversial idea. Jeremi Mordasewicz, the Polish Confederation of Polish Employers Lewiatan's economic expert, says: "The economic risk taken by not joining this institution would be so great; there is no other way.

"The second point is the law." he adds. "It is not as if we have an option to join the eurozone or not. We agreed to join as soon as our economy meets the EU's standards."

Chlebowski supports this view. "It would be a great loss for our economy, if Poland did not join the eurozone. We would lose useful tools to fight public debt and the budget deficit. It could also cause fluctuations on the capital market and we really do not want that," he warned.