Warsaw - Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Premier Donald Tusk have a reached a compromise on their differences over Warsaw's acceptance of the new European Union treaty, warding off the prospect of the country having to hold a referendum, reports said Sunday. Polish media, citing sources both within Tusk's governing party, the Civic Platform (PO) and Kaczynski's Law and Justice (PiS), said the two leaders had reached agreement in five hours of talks on Saturday.
PO parliamentary faction leader Cezary Chlebowski told Radio Z that nothing now stood in the way of the Sejm, or parliament, formally approving the so-called Lisbon Treaty in two weeks' time.
Tusk's coalition of the PO and the farmers' party Samoobrona had wanted to get the treaty ratified in mid-March.
But the nationalist-conservative opposition camp under Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, the former premier, stopped the ratification proceedings in demanding new legal assurances in the treaty.
The opposition fears that the EU reform treaty's basic rights charter will take priority over Polish law, which currently limits EU competence.
Under the compromise reached on Saturday, it was agreed that the nationalists' demands would be considered via a decree of parliament, rather than anchored in actual law.
According to presidential office spokesman Michal Kaminski, a further part of the compromise is that the PO would agree to a law laying down the powers of parliament and of the government and state organs in dealing with EU issues.
Without the backing of the opposition PiS, there would be no way for the ratification achieving the necessary two-thirds support in parliament. In mid-March, the prospects were that the EU treaty would then have to be decided in a referendum.
