EU: Poland Threatens Sarkozy's Scheme to Rescue Lisbon Treaty

President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday moved to head off a worsening crisis over the European Union's gridlocked reforms after Poland joined the Czech Republic in defying Franco-German pressure for a quick fix to the stalemate caused by Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon treaty.

Sarkozy launched his six-month presidency of the EU with a pledge to resolve the "institutional crisis" triggered by the Irish rebuff. He is to travel to Dublin and Prague to try to cajole the Irish into staging a second vote on the EU's stalled reform blueprint and to push for a speedier Czech approval of the plan, as well as intervening with President Lech Kaczynski of Poland, who yesterday announced he was suspending ratification of the treaty until Ireland decided what to do.

"For the time being the question of the treaty is pointless," Kaczynski told the Warsaw newspaper Dziennik in a surprise announcement timed to coincide with the first day of the Sarkozy EU presidency.

The Franco-German strategy for dealing with the Irish rebuff is to get the other 26 EU countries to ratify the treaty as quickly as possible and to isolate the Irish. Of the 26, 19 have already ratified.

But the Polish and Czech resistance indicates that Sarkozy's strategy of quarantining the Irish is unraveling and that the Irish contagion is spreading. The bombshell from Warsaw will test Sarkozy's fabled talent for striking deals and complicate his ambitious EU agenda.

The Polish parliament has ratified the treaty, but Kaczynski, who signed the treaty in Lisbon last December, still has to endorse that ratification.

Sarkozy told journalists in the Elysée Palace that a main aim over the next six months was to rescue the Lisbon treaty - "to solve the institutional crisis, to find a solution despite the deadlock we're currently facing".

A senior Elysée source described Kaczynski as difficult. "He has never been a particularly easy partner to work with in building and shaping Europe," he said. "I can't imagine how the [Polish] president can go against the will of the parliament. It's odd."

The French are telling the central Europeans, who are keen advocates of EU enlargement in the Balkans and into the former Soviet Union, that no new countries will join the EU unless the Lisbon treaty is adopted. "I will fight to ensure that EU membership does not exceed 27," said the Elysée source.

The Germans, who masterminded the treaty last year as a response to the failed European constitution, are also desperate to salvage the package, which streamlines the way the EU functions, takes decisions, reduces the European commission and creates new posts of a European president and foreign minister.

"The Czechs will be persuaded in the end. Otherwise there can be no more enlargement," said Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister.

"If [the Czechs] dig in their heels, they will start their presidency [in January] in great isolation," said the Elysée source.

But the central Europeans are furious at what they perceive to be bullying from the French and the Germans. President Vaclav Klaus in Prague, the EU's biggest Eurosceptic, has described the treaty as dead and the Czech upper house has parked the treaty in the country's supreme court.

"We're not blocking anything," said Alexandr Vondra, the Czech deputy prime minister, calling for an end to the mudslinging that has followed the Irish rejection earlier this month.

Despite the mounting problems, Sarkozy is planning a political fix in the hope that the Irish can be cajoled into running a second referendum.

The senior French source said the aim was to "have an escape hatch" prepared by an EU summit in October and to sway the Irish by offering them "political commitments" which would probably focus on guaranteeing the Irish a permanent seat in the European commission.

The source added that the Irish had staged a re-run of the vote on the EU's Nice Treaty six years ago, and suggested they could do so again.