Blocking the vote

Poland wants to change a new EU voting system proposed by Germany as part of the current EU President's efforts to resurrect the stalled EU constitution. Warsaw's plan would increase the influence of smaller and medium-sized countries by taking into account population size and imposing a system of weighting. Poland is prepared to block the new voting system if it fails to win support for its proposal.

Germany's vision is the so-called "double-majority" system, which will change the way votes on the policy-making EU Council of Ministers are calculated. The system would require most decisions to have the backing of 55 percent of member states with at least 65 percent of the EU population. Under the current system, population size has relatively little influence on the number of votes.

The proposed system would greatly increase the influence of the biggest EU countries, such as Germany, Britain and France, at the same time reducing the influence of medium-sized countries such as Poland.

Poland has come up with a modified formula, which Marek Cichocki, President Kaczyński's senior adviser on EU affairs, says is fairer. "Our proposal is a combination of the double-majority and an improved democratic element," Cichocki told Reuters.

However, Poland's stand on the issue has not gone down well in EU circles. Asked what would happen if Poland vetoed the start of the Intergovernmental Conference on the new constitution, an unnamed diplomat told daily Gazeta Wyborcza. "Well, 26 countries can also sit together and agree to sign a common treaty. This would mean holding a referendum in Poland on whether its citizens wanted the country to leave the EU."