The European Union (EU) summit entered its third day early Saturday, with a group of countries still studying their counter-proposal after Poland accepted a compromise proposal put forward by several other countries on the contentious issue of voting system in a new EU treaty.

There is no sign yet of a conclusion of the tough negotiations, which started Thursday evening and had been expected to conclude on Friday.

The compromise deal was brokered around midnight Friday by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Luxembourg counterpart Jean-Claude Juncker with the Poles. Under the deal, there will be no changes to the current voting system before 2014 to be followed by a transitional period until 2017.

Earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel threatened to go forward with the road map for the future EU treaty, designed to replace the defunct EU constitution, without Poland.

But Merkel's ambition was rejected by leaders of Britain, France and Luxembourg, who managed to broker the compromise proposal later.

However, a group of countries which had already ratified the EU constitution, including Italy, Belgium, Finland, Greece and Austria, were angered by the compromise with Poland and met to discuss a counter-proposal, diplomatic sources said early Saturday. Poland had been firm in its opposition to the "double majority" voting scheme envisaged in the EU constitution, fearing that populous countries like Germany would dominate decision makings in the union.

The "double majority" voting system provides for decision-making by at least 55 percent of the number of member states and at the same time 65 percent of EU's total population at the expense of national vetoes.

Poland had threatened to derail the new treaty process and proposed a new voting scheme instead -- a nation's votes would equal the square root of its population.

Britain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands were the three other countries who had the most concerns over the road map for the EU treaty.

It seems that Blair, who will step down on June 27 and is attending his last EU summit as British prime minister, will leave Brussels with content.

Reports here said that a draft outline of the new treaty met Britain's demands in four areas.

Britain is concerned about the inclusion of the EU charter of fundamental rights, which it fears may affect its labor laws. London also has fears that a new treaty would give Brussels too much power on criminal justice matters.

A copy of the draft document circulated here said the texts of the fundamental rights will not be included in the new treaty, which will instead contain a cross reference to the charter of fundamental rights giving it legally binding value and setting out the scope of its application.

Source: Xinhua