IT IS not exactly a surprise that Poland has teamed up with France to provide the toughest opposition to Britain in the budget row.

But British officials have been unsure whether Poland’s intransigence is a clever move — playing hardball up to the last minute — or a sign of the tough role that it intends to play within Europe after this week’s crisis is past.

Poland “is an awkward customer and was always going to be”, said Alasdair Murray, of the Centre for European Reform, the London-based pro-European think-tank. He attributes some of that awkwardness to the “populist conservative trend in its politics, which has been there since democracy”.

Last month that led to the election of the conservative Government of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, the Prime Minister.

Poland also has “complicated views on the EU itself”, Murray adds. There is a strong Eurosceptic element. But the new Government also draws much support from “peasant Poland”, which is about to get a torrent of money from Brussels, provided that there is some sort of deal.

The assertion of the Franco-Polish pact came yesterday in a joint rejection of Britain’s revised proposal on Wednesday.

“After five months of reflection, the UK presidency has put forward a proposal that cannot become the basis of an agreement,” Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French Foreign Minister, and his Polish counterpart, Stefan Meller, wrote in a joint letter to the Financial Times.

That pronouncement was not a surprise to the British delegation — but the speed of the rejection raised eyebrows, only a day after the new offer.

The compromise that France and Poland sought, they said, should be based on the principle “that the poorest regions in the EU should receive privileged treatment and cannot be the victims of the negotiations”.

That language raises questions about how Poland sees its role in the EU after this week.

It appears inspired by an ever-present sensitivity that Poland might be treated as a “second-class member”.

That quickness to bridle was evident in talks about the now-defunct constitution before last year’s accession to the EU.

A strain of that will no doubt always feature in its positioning towards Brussels. All the same, it would be surprising if this week’s alliance with France were a permanent feature of the landscape. France, now in the warm-up for the 2007 presidential elections, has little incentive to compromise on reform of European farming. Provided that it has respectable support — and Poland certainly counts as that — it may think it worthwhile to hold out.

But Poland itself must surely favour getting a deal. The amount it is set to get from 2007 onwards would be enormously greater than it gets now — or would get if there is no deal.

For Poland, almost any deal is better than no deal. There, its interests diverge from those of France. For Britain, the problem dogging these talks is that many countries came to regard the draft budget of the Luxembourg presidency in June as their entitlement. Any revision is seen as a cut or sacrifice.

“In retrospect, perhaps we should have scuppered the Luxembourg package in May,” rather than letting it take on the appearance of solidity, one official suggested.

Britain’s hope is that Poland’s realism — and self- interest — will prove stronger than its prickly sense of national grievance, not just in this row but beyond.