Speaking to EurActiv last week, the Polish Ambassador to the EU Jan Tombiński had already suggested that the Irish 'no' would affect the ratification process in Poland (EurActiv 25/06/08). This time the Polish head of state, speaking to the daily Dziennik, made it plain that he will not sign the text "for the moment". Without the President's signature, Poland cannot complete the ratification process. Dziennik's main headline reads: "President: Treaty is dead. He won't sign."
"For the moment, the question of the treaty is pointless. It is difficult to say how [this] will end," Kaczynski said. He immediately added: "It is not serious to say that there will be no Union without the Treaty." Kaczyński also compared the situation following the Irish 'no' to the aftermath of the negative referenda on the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands in 2005, when its ratification process was abandoned.
The views of the Polish President are in sharp contrast with the mainstream position of EU leaders, who said at the Brussels summit on 20 June that the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty should continue. This would put pressure on the Irish to vote a second time, as they did for the Nice Treaty in 2002. This is notably the intention of France, and the Polish President's announcement thus comes as a "poisoned chalice" to President Sarkozy on the very first day of the six-month French EU presidency.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is due to travel to Ireland on July 11 to hear the concerns of voters there at first hand, a day after he unveils the priorities of the French EU presidency in an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
