Brussels, 29/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - Poland, which is opposed to the “double majority” system provided for by the Constitutional Treaty for qualified majority decisions at the Council of Ministers, has proposed an alternative voting system to its partners, which it hopes to include in the future Treaty of the Union: the “Penrose” system, which is named after a British mathematician. Basically, Warsaw is suggesting that the square root of the number (in millions) of the inhabitants of each state be used to obtain the number of votes to be allocated to each member state for all qualified majority voting. Following this method, Germany, which has 82 million inhabitants, would have nine votes, and Poland, with its 38 million, would have six. In order for a decision to be taken by a qualified majority, it would require a majority of countries (in other words, 14 out of 27) and 62% of the votes, according to the Polish plan. The draft Constitutional Treaty, on the other hand, provides for qualified majority to be reached when a decision has the support of 55% of the member state, which would be at least 15 of them, at the same time representing at least 65% of the population of the EU (double majority).
On Thursday, Polish diplomats emphasised just how firmly Poland would start negotiations to see the withdrawal of “double majority” in favour of a mechanism which was more favourable to Poland. “If the other countries do not want to discuss our proposal, then we will resort to extreme measures”, they stated in Thursday's edition of the Polish daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, indicating that the Polish government would not hesitate to use its veto to block work on the new Treaty. In the absence of a new Treaty, the Treaty of Nice (which is highly favourable to Poland in terms of voting rights) would continue to apply. (hb)