When Grand Plans Unravel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it one of the goals of her European Union presidency to get the bloc's stalled constitution back on track. However Poland, worried about losing influence under new voting rules, has apparently made it a goal to stop her. And after a weekend of intensive diplomacy, Merkel seems to be no further forward, just days before a crunch EU summit where the treaty will be approved -- or not.

Merkel even admitted on Sunday after talks with Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker that it wasn't impossible that the summit, which will take place Thursday and Friday in Brussels, will fail. She said that as current EU president she would naturally do her best to make sure that it succeeds, but that "a presidency can only be as successful as the willingness to compromise on the part of all the states."

Merkel had spent much of the weekend trying to persuade Poland to soften its position on the treaty's new voting system. She met with Polish President Lech Kaczynski at the German government's guesthouse, Schloss Meseberg, near Berlin Saturday and followed that up with a phone call on Sunday. However she made no progress.

"The positions have not changed," she said Sunday in reference to her conversation with Kaczynski, and said there were "serious problems" which still needed to be solved.

Kaczynski too said after the meeting that both sides were sticking to their guns. "I told the chancellor that the solution we have proposed is already a compromise," Kaczynski said in a statement broadcast by Polish television after the meeting.

Merkel has made it one of her main objectives for her EU presidency -- which runs until the end of June -- to resurrect the bloc's constitution which has been on ice since the Dutch and French populations rejected it in referenda in 2005.

Merkel is hoping to get approval for a revised EU constitution -- which will now be called a "treaty" -- at the summit this week. Germany wants the EU governments to agree to a roadmap to allow a slimmed-down treaty to be ratified by 2009.

If the draft treaty is adopted, the EU voting process will be changed so that it will be easier to make decisions in the expanded 27-member bloc. A new "double majority" voting system will be introduced whereby an EU decision has to be approved by 55 percent of the EU states, which must also represent 65 percent of the bloc's entire population.

The new system will significantly decrease Poland's influence -- and increase Germany's. Poland's population only comprises about 8 percent of the EU total of 490 million, compared to Germany's 17 percent.

Unsurprisingly, Poland, worried about losing power relative to its neighbor, is opposing the new system. It is threatening to use its veto at the summit this week to block any agreement on the treaty, and wants to re-open the discussion on how the voting system will work. It has proposed an alternative "square root" system which would base the number of votes on the square root of a country's population -- and give Poland relatively more clout vis-à-vis Germany.

The issue is seen as a potential dealbreaker at this week's crunch summit, which politicians had been hoping might lift the EU out of the doldrums it has been in since the constitution stalled. Merkel rejected the suggestion Sunday that the issue of the voting system could be excluded from this week's summit and left for detailed negotiations later in the year. "I do not see that as an option," she said.

Germany demanding appeasement from smaller states.

Blair and Sarkozy in a sweetheart deal.

And Gordon Brown apparently having at least some of the intestinal fortitude of Sir Winston.

I love it when a plan coms together.