Poland
- Leszek Miller, Prime Minister and Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Poland signing the Accession Treaty (Photo: European Commission)
Poland
With an area of over 312,000 km2 and a population of 38.14 million, Poland is by far the largest country of those which joined the EU on 1 May 2004. It had a Europe Agreement since 1994, when it also applied for membership.
When Poland negotiated membership of the EU they got 27 votes in the Council compared to 29 for Germany, Italy, France and the UK. This was almost equality with the other big member states in the EU.
By contrast, the Lisbon Treaty from 2014 only offers Poland half of the German influence in the Council of Ministers. Here Poland shall vote with 38 million citizens against Germanys 82 million citizens from 1 November 2014 as stipulated in the Lisbon Treaty.
The Polish share of the vote in the Council of Ministers falls slightly from 7.8% to 7.63%.
Links
http://www.europarl.eu.int/enl....../applicants/poland_home_en.htm
