With the Polish veto still hanging in the air after last Friday’s EU-Russia summit misfire, the EU continues to invent ways to break the deadlock while Polish politicians are deflecting criticism they are becoming the biggest “troublemakers” in the EU.

This week Brussels offered Poland a written guarantee Warsaw could suspend EU talks on an EU-Russia “Permanent Partnership Council” on energy if Russia misbehaved on trade in future, but Warsaw declined sticking to its request for a guarantee it can suspend the much grander EU-Russia “Strategic Partnership Treaty” talks instead.

With delicate negotiations still ongoing, the big EU member states such as the UK, Germany and France have not attacked Poland openly on the veto.

Privately however, diplomats say the EU should do more for Poland on trade but that Poland should not hold the EU-Russia treaty hostage over vegetables and meat.

In the background, Russia’s threat to slap food export bans on the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria has bolstered the Polish argument that the old EU15 must show “solidarity” with the new EU10+2 states or risk seeing Russia bully other EU countries as it has done Poland.

But at the same time, Poland’s veto comes as the latest in a line of annoying moves for Paris and Berlin if not London – the previous bad boy in the class – while the Kaczynski twins’ awkward handling of internal issues such as gay rights and free press has also raised eyebrows in Brussels.

In the past 12 months Poland’s cry of “solidarity” has erupted over labour market access, the services directive, a German-Russian gas pipeline and the Schengen zone. Its budget deficit is breaking EU rules. Its plan to hold a referendum on eurozone entry is unpopular and in January it alone vetoed VAT reforms.