Poland dealt a fresh blow to the European Union's wounded constitution on Tuesday, saying it may delay a planned referendum despite efforts by France, which voted against the charter first, to keep the treaty alive.
Aleksander Kwasniewski, president of the bloc's largest new member, said he might put off the vote from his favored October date if next week's EU summit took no decision on the fate of the constitution.
Poland should not set a date until the bloc had discussed the crisis caused by the rejection of the charter by French and Dutch voters, he told public radio in an interview, noting Britain had just shelved plans to hold its own referendum.
Kwasniewski raised the prospect that EU leaders might either decide on June 16-17 to call a pause in ratification, or fail to agree on any joint way forward.
"(At the summit) we may decide to give ourselves a few months and meet (again) when we are better prepared," he said. "A lack of a decision is also a decision."
Opinion polls in countries such as Denmark, Poland and even Luxembourg, which plan to hold referendums, have shown a sharp swing toward the "No" camp since the French and Dutch results, threatening more governments with a humiliating defeat.
In an interview published a day after his government put legislation to hold a referendum on ice, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said EU leaders should focus on Europe's economic and social direction rather than plowing on with the constitution as if nothing had happened.
"If two countries, particularly two founder members of the European Union, vote "No," then it obviously makes a difference," he told the Financial Times newspaper.
INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS
Blair hinted that in the longer term, EU leaders would have to salvage key institutional reforms from the charter, providing a more stable leadership and a more efficient decision-making system to keep the expanding block working.
"When you enlarge to 27, and then 28, you know we will need that set of rules, and it is not for Britain to turn round and say the constitution is dead," he said.
However, diplomats said it was too early to start salvaging some of the rules from the wreckage of a constitution which many EU leaders do not acknowledge is sunk. That process might take another year to crystallize, one said.
France's new foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, on a maiden visit to the European Parliament, sought to rebuild momentum for approval of the treaty by saying it was "normal" not to stop the ratification process.
After talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Strasbourg, he said France "more than ever" wants to take part in building Europe.
In Luxembourg, EU finance ministers sought to limit the economic and monetary damage from the constitutional crisis, dismissing calls from one of Italy's ruling parties for an exit from the euro as "nonsense" not worth discussion.
French Finance Minister Thierry Breton pledged that the new Paris government appointed after the referendum defeat would respect its European budget discipline commitments and not try to spend its way out of trouble.
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