How Europe discovered the farmers' friend
In a rare move, Poland has been granted an extra seat at the summit negotiating table in Copenhagen later this week - that's how serious things are getting.
In Euroland nobody breaches protocol lightly. Countries match note-taker for note-taker, diplomat for diplomat, and minister for minister in the rooms where the decisions are taken.
At the European summit level, top-table attendance is normally limited to prime ministers, foreign ministers and, increasingly, ministers for European affairs (in the case of France, there is also one head of state). Occasionally, to deal with specific issues which slip through the net and stray into summit territory, agriculture ministers or home affairs may be called in.
But the principle is that whatever you get, I get too. There is no favouritism.
So how come Jarosław Kalinowski will be sitting down with the rest in Copenhagen on Thursday when none of his counterparts from the other nine applicant countries will?
"It's very simple," said one Brussels diplomat making the summit's seating arrangements. "Kalinowski is a very special man: he has no counterparts in the other countries. He is the key. It's all down to him."
That, at least, is how the decision to accord that extra seat to Poland is being sold in the corridors of power.
The logic goes like this: Kalinowski is not just the vice premier. Nor is he just the nation's agriculture supremo. He is also a man whose PSL party is propping up a government which is about as rock solid as a jelly in a sieve.
Kalinowski alone can deliver farm support behind whatever agriculture deal is sewn up at the summit as the backbone of Poland's financial enlargement package.
If he fails, the farmers will pull the rug from under him, bringing down the PSL, undermining the fragile coalition and leaving the Polish government in a minority.
It gets worse: when the enlargement accord is put to the Polish people in a referendum, the result will be invalid if less than half the electorate turns out to vote.
In that case, the democratic endorsement of enlargement reverts to the politicians, with a two-thirds majority required in both parliamentary houses. And the question is, could the current minority government deliver that bare minimum requirement?
That is why Kalinowski's name is spoken in hushed tones in Brussels in these last few days of bartering and bargaining.
Meanwhile, European minister Danuta Hübner was patrolling Brussels last Friday talking up the Polish case for a better farm deal and urging the EU not to pin everything on short-term savings at the expense of longer-term enlargement benefits: precisely the same message, in fact, as she was getting from the EU.
The numbers have been crunched so that the Poles will be able to claim a significant increase in direct farm payments, giving them 40% of the total aid package in the first year, instead of the official 25% of the EU offer.
If she can, Poland will try to squeeze more, to shore up Kalinowski as the farmers' friend.
At a press conference in the European Parliament in Brussels on Friday, Hübner was asked by a Czech journalist whether it was true that the Poles were backing off in their financial demands from the EU.
"My God, who told you that? It's not true!" replied Hübner in horror.
It's certainly bad public relations to be seen to be weakening at this stage in the end game - especially when you hold an ace card in the unlikely shape of Mr. Kalinowski.
Geoff Meade is the European Union editor of the Press Association.
In Euroland nobody breaches protocol lightly. Countries match note-taker for note-taker, diplomat for diplomat, and minister for minister in the rooms where the decisions are taken.
At the European summit level, top-table attendance is normally limited to prime ministers, foreign ministers and, increasingly, ministers for European affairs (in the case of France, there is also one head of state). Occasionally, to deal with specific issues which slip through the net and stray into summit territory, agriculture ministers or home affairs may be called in.
But the principle is that whatever you get, I get too. There is no favouritism.
So how come Jarosław Kalinowski will be sitting down with the rest in Copenhagen on Thursday when none of his counterparts from the other nine applicant countries will?
"It's very simple," said one Brussels diplomat making the summit's seating arrangements. "Kalinowski is a very special man: he has no counterparts in the other countries. He is the key. It's all down to him."
That, at least, is how the decision to accord that extra seat to Poland is being sold in the corridors of power.
The logic goes like this: Kalinowski is not just the vice premier. Nor is he just the nation's agriculture supremo. He is also a man whose PSL party is propping up a government which is about as rock solid as a jelly in a sieve.
Kalinowski alone can deliver farm support behind whatever agriculture deal is sewn up at the summit as the backbone of Poland's financial enlargement package.
If he fails, the farmers will pull the rug from under him, bringing down the PSL, undermining the fragile coalition and leaving the Polish government in a minority.
It gets worse: when the enlargement accord is put to the Polish people in a referendum, the result will be invalid if less than half the electorate turns out to vote.
In that case, the democratic endorsement of enlargement reverts to the politicians, with a two-thirds majority required in both parliamentary houses. And the question is, could the current minority government deliver that bare minimum requirement?
That is why Kalinowski's name is spoken in hushed tones in Brussels in these last few days of bartering and bargaining.
Meanwhile, European minister Danuta Hübner was patrolling Brussels last Friday talking up the Polish case for a better farm deal and urging the EU not to pin everything on short-term savings at the expense of longer-term enlargement benefits: precisely the same message, in fact, as she was getting from the EU.
The numbers have been crunched so that the Poles will be able to claim a significant increase in direct farm payments, giving them 40% of the total aid package in the first year, instead of the official 25% of the EU offer.
If she can, Poland will try to squeeze more, to shore up Kalinowski as the farmers' friend.
At a press conference in the European Parliament in Brussels on Friday, Hübner was asked by a Czech journalist whether it was true that the Poles were backing off in their financial demands from the EU.
"My God, who told you that? It's not true!" replied Hübner in horror.
It's certainly bad public relations to be seen to be weakening at this stage in the end game - especially when you hold an ace card in the unlikely shape of Mr. Kalinowski.
Geoff Meade is the European Union editor of the Press Association.
