The Lisbon Treaty: A pyrrhic victory?

Parliament ratified the Lisbon Treaty during a special session last week. The Sejm passed the bill on April 1, with 384 voting for, 56 against and 12 abstaining. The Senate voted the following day, with 74 in favor, 17 against and six abstaining.

The Constitution requires the president to sign or veto the bill within 21 days of the Senate's ratification. President Lech Kaczyński said, however, that he would not sign the bill before Prime Minister Tusk had fulfilled an agreement negotiated during their meeting on March 29. At that meeting, the PM agreed to a separate resolution that would guarantee that the terms Poland had negotiated could not be changed.

"This is a real success. At one point it was obvious that it would happen, but lately Law and Justice [PiS] made the outcome less certain," said Aleksander Smolar, a political scientist and president of the Batory Foundation. "It confirms Poland's pro-European orientation," he told WBJ.

The whole situation of uncertainty has worsened Poland's image in Europe. "This atmosphere has shown that one can not rely on Poland's authorities. Neither Civic Platform nor PiS won this battle, but PiS was the bigger loser," Smolar told WBJ.

Both the president and PiS head Jarosław Kaczyński asked PiS deputies to vote in favor. Nevertheless, all of the deputies who voted against the treaty were from PiS - nearly a third of the party's Sejm deputies and around half of its Senators.

"The Kaczyńskis knew that they had to pass the bill, but they wanted to show that they could do something. ... Partly they did it to defend Poland's national interests, partly because of the influence of Radio Maryja," Smolar said. "But their efforts failed," he concluded.

Based on the number of PiS deputies who broke with party line, Smolar expects a new party will be formed, which would be further on the ideological right than PiS.