President Kaczynski of Poland says that ‘for now’ he will not sign the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

The BBC report describes Kaczynski as "a conservative who has long opposed the reform treaty". But what about this? "I really want ratification."

One way or the other, President Kaczynski is good at saying exactly what he thinks, so unless the Irish come round to accepting the Treaty of their own free will there is no chance of Poland signing it.

Plus, unlike (I suspect) almost every politician in Europe talking at great length about the Treaty, President Kaczynski will have read it with great care, identifying exactly what he likes and what he does not like.

As a lawyer himself with a beady eye for detail, he is comfortable in the view that if the EU’s own rules say that an EU Treaty has to be approved by every country, one country has the right to say No and block the Treaty. Which ends the matter.

Anything else (he argues) means that the rules on paper are not the rules in practice, which means that the EU Strong tend to fix the game. And after the experience of the past century, that is just the sort of thing which Poland has good reason not to want.

Plenty of Poland’s politicians will now make a big noise saying that in taking this position Kaczynski is not being ‘European’, while quietly being quite pleased that if the Treaty founders Poland keeps the (for Poland) terrific Nice voting formula all the longer.

President Sarkozy takes over the EU Presidency today:

"Something isn’t right. Something isn’t right at all … Europe worries people and, worse than that, I find, little by little our fellow citizens are asking themselves if, after all, the national level isn’t better equipped to protect them than the European level."

Sarkozy called such thinking a "step backward".

Would Kaczynski argue that sticking to the rules is in fact the first step forward?