The 27 foreign ministers of the EU met in Luxemburg on Monday, to thrash out final details of the EU Reform Treaty - note not a 'Constitution' in sight - before their bosses put the finishing touches to it later this week.
Well, that's the theory.
Poland's position has been a little confused. In the late June inter-governmental conference, Poland went in demanding a square root voting system in the EU Council - which would maintain some of the favourable voting weight Poland currently enjoys compared to its medium sized, 38 million, population.
The proposed double majority system would give the really big players more power, at the expense of the medium players, like Poland.
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski had declared, maybe slightly melodramatically, that ‘square root' voting was 'worth dieing for'.
But Polish suicidal courage seemed to abandon the government during the conference and all Kaczynski emerged with was a delay (2017) to when the new voting system would be brought in.
The government also appeared to have backed down over the Ioannina compromise - basically a blocking system, where a nation can delay key legislation for, say, up to two years.
Well, that's what the rest of the EU thought. And yet, only a couple of days after that meeting in June, PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski announced that the talks were only a ‘starting point' for discussion, and that he would still be insisting on the Joanina compromise at the real meeting in October.
Kaczynski vowed to fight on.
So far, Poland has followed the UK in getting an opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights, unless those rights already concur with national law.
And Poland wants a special mention on 'energy security' - a reference to Europe's dependence on Russian gas.
But the key for the Polish government is going to be the length of the blocking mechanism. It wants a two year brake written into the treaty.
Foreign Minister Ana Fotyga said before the Luxemburg meeting, Monday: "We believe that a binding protocol attached to the Treaty is a very good solution. We will try to convince others to it and I hope that we will succeed."
The country has an election on October 21, and the government badly wants to appear to its many Eurosceptic constituents as being tough, but fair, on Europe. It lost the battle over voting systems in the summer, can it now cave in over Ioannina?
President Lech Kaczynski said before the inter-governmental conference in June: "The one who wins in these kinds of situations is the one with the strongest nerves."
The government has just slipped behind in the opinion polls, days before the election here in Poland, so Kaczynski has got to come home with something. How strong are his nerves?
