Poland plans to reopen EU deal, official says

WARSAW, June 29 (Reuters) Poland plans to renew discussion of the deal agreed last week on a new EU treaty to ensure it gets the concessions it wants on the voting mechanism, a senior Polish official said today.

Incoming European Union president Portugal told Poland on Thursday not to even think of trying to reopen the deal, which was clinched in Brussels last week after a compromise to get Poland to drop its threat to veto the talks.

Warsaw says it won a mechanism enabling states just short of a blocking minority to delay EU decisions for up to two years once new voting rules enter fully into force in 2017.

But EU officials say the mandate provides for decisions to be postponed only until the next EU summit as originally laid down in 1994 as what is known as the Ioannina Compromise. Summits are three to four months apart.

Detailed treaty negotiations are due to take place in the Inter-Governmental Conference, due to begin on July 23.

''Poland will come back to the Ioannina blocking mechanism at the Inter-Governmental Conference of course, because the two years are guaranteed to us by a political agreement,'' a senior official close to Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Reuters.

Poland had initially opposed the new voting system under the new treaty which is designed to reform the 27-nation bloc's institutions, saying it gave too much power to bigger countries and Germany in particular.

Poland's tough negotiating stance cemented its reputation as the European Union's awkward newcomer.

Other EU leaders were shocked that Prime Minister Kaczynski and his brother Lech, the president, invoked the horrors of Nazi Germany's occupation of Poland during World War Two to bolster their demands.

REUTERS SLD ND1338