Polish president Lech Kaczynski will sign the Lisbon Treaty on October 11, news agencies reported on October 8, quoting a statement by a presidential aide in a Polish television interview.
 
If the signing by Kaczynski goes ahead, this would leave the Czech Republic as the only country not to have completed the process of ratification of the mammoth document that will bring substantial changes to the workings of the EU.
 
Czech president Vaclav Klaus, an avowed Eurosceptic, is withholding his signature pending a ruling by the constitutional court on the mutual compatibility of the Czech constitution and the Lisbon Treaty – which earlier this year was approved by both houses of parliament in Prague. The constitutional court challenge was mounted by senators said to be closely aligned to Klaus.
 
In Poland, the head of the bureau for national security, Aleksander Szczyglo, was reported to have told a local television station that Kaczynski would keep the promise that he made before the October 2 2009 Irish referendum, that if the Irish voted "yes" he would sign the treaty.
 
Szczyglo said that he expected that Kaczynski would sign in the early evening, local time in Warsaw, after returning from visit to the Vatican.
 
The Irish "yes" vote on Lisbon, which reversed Irish rejection in a June 2008 referendum, was the subject of a special debate in the European Parliament on October 7 2009.
 
Fredrik Reinfeldt, prime minister of Sweden – the country currently holding the rotating presidency of the EU, said: "We in the European Council are united in our wish for the Treaty to enter into force before the end of the year, provided it has been ratified by all member states".
 
"It is the work of all three EU institutions to prepare for the transition to the new Treaty – the Commission, the Council and Parliament. It is important that we co-operate to get it into place. I am looking forward to this co-operation," Reinfeldt said.
 
European Commission President Jose Barroso said that all 27 EU member states had ratified the treaty in the sense that it had been approved by their national parliaments or through referendums.
 
"In a democratic sense, the Treaty has already been ratified, but we now must conclude the formal process as soon as possible by the signatures of the Polish and Czech presidents," Barroso said.
 
"I am ready to start the work on getting a new Commission into place as soon as the legal provisions are made," he said.
 
European People’s Party group leader Joseph Daul, addressing the European Parliament debate, called on the Polish and Czech presidents to sign the Lisbon Treaty as quickly as possible and said that Ireland’s strong yes in the October 2 referendum should send a clear message to the two presidents.
 
Socialist group leader Martin Schulz said that a lot was at stake if the Lisbon Treaty did not enter into force soon.
 
If this did not happen, Schulz said, Europe would be divided and the global voice of the EU would be silenced at a time when the EU must stick together for the world to be able to meet the greatest global challenge of our time.
 
Liberal group leader Guy Verhofstadt said: "It has taken us eight years to get here. The Lisbon Treaty and Europe has the strong support of EU citizens. Now we must move on. We cannot afford to wait".