Poland has proposed changes to the voting system at the heart of the European Union's stalled Constitution to try to increase the influence of smaller and medium-sized countries, a senior official said yesterday.
Germany, with a population of 82 million, has over twice as many citizens as Poland, with 38 million people. The Polish plan would give Germany nine votes on the council and Poland six. Malta, with a population of just 400,000, would have one vote.
Marek Cichocki, senior adviser to Polish President Lech Kaczynski on EU affairs, said Warsaw's proposal would take into account population size, but would also have a weighting using a mathematical calculation suggested some years ago by Sweden.
This would modify a double-majority voting system backed by Germany and most other members of the 27-member bloc.
"Our proposal is a combination of the double-majority and an improved democratic element," Mr Cichocki told Reuters in an interview.
He said the proposal had not yet been put to Germany, which holds the rotating EU presidency, and negotiations on it could be difficult.
"The first reaction will be negative, but I think we all want to have an agreement by the end of the German presidency (at the end of June) and if that is to be achieved, there will have to be compromise," Mr Cichocki said.
Germany wants to breathe new life into the EU Constitution which was rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in referendums in 2005.
A key element of the treaty that Berlin supports for the new Constitution is a proposal to change the way in which votes on the EU's policy-making Council of Ministers are calculated.
The treaty proposal, known as the double-majority system, would require most decisions to have the backing of 55 per cent of member states with at least 65 per cent of the EU population.
Under the current voting system agreed in 2000, population sizes have a relatively small bearing on the number of votes assigned to EU countries on the council.
But the new proposal would increase the influence of the biggest EU countries such as Germany and at the same time reduce the influence of smaller countries such as Poland.
The double-majority voting formula was the result of protracted diplomatic efforts and Germany has made it clear that it would be very reluctant to reopen the debate.
"This compromise was reached after very difficult, marathon negotiations," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, noting many proposals had been made to satisfy the Poles during previous talks.
Poland is unhappy with the formula and has now come up with a modified formula, which Mr Cichocki said was fairer.
"The essence of our proposal is that we accept the double majority system and that we propose something new which makes the system fairer and more democratic," he said.
Poland's proposal would refer to the square root of the population sizes, which would narrow the gap in weighting between the biggest and smallest countries.
"We propose a method based on the square root," Mr Cichocki said. "This would allow us to give some more political significance to the smaller countries and underestimate a little bit the biggest countries, which in our opinion is much fairer."
Sweden put forward the idea of a square root voting system before the Nice EU summit in 2000. The theory was developed in 1946 by British mathematician Lionel Penrose at a time when weighted voting in the United Nations was being considered.