Nice Treaty could be held mid-October

THE second referendum on the Nice Treaty is likely to be held in mid October following calls from EU ministers to have it before the important leaders’ summit later that month.

Foreign Minister Brian Cowen said the Government would try to accommodate this wish when he attended an informal meeting of fellow EU ministers in the Danish town of Elsinore yesterday.

Pressure on Ireland to vote yes to the Nice Treaty and allow EU enlargement go ahead intensified as the ministers met to finalise plans to allow ten new countries to join.

The two day meeting is in the Danish seaside town, made famous by Shakespeare who chose it as the home place of Hamlet.

Mr Cowen agreed that the Irish vote is fast becoming the single greatest obstacle to enlargement as negotiations on the other problems come closer to being solved by the December deadline.

He told his colleagues the Government will bring the referendum legislation before the Dáil next Wednesday and Thursday and again the following week after which it will go to the President for signing.

Once the Minister for the Environment signs the order the vote can be held between 30 and 90 days later. This means the earliest date would be mid October and with the Brussels summit on the 25 and 26 of that month Friday 18 could be as the most likely referendum day.

Mr Cowen said the Danish EU presidency had indicated they would prefer if the vote took place before the summit. “I am positively disposed to work within that time frame, though I cannot anticipate the Government’s decision,” he said.

The Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt before the meeting said it would make it easier if the vote was held before the Summit. “However this depends on the domestic needs of the Irish and we have to respect what the Irish will decide,” he said.

He also said it was time to begin thinking of what should be done if Ireland voted no and vetoed the largest ever expansion of the Union.

However Mr Cowen would not agree and said his primary responsibility was to convince the Irish people that a yes vote was in their best interests.

“I do not contemplate defeat and I do not take victory for granted,” he said.

Ireland was never in a better position to take advantage of an enlargement of the EU with its strong economy. He said it was now time for the No camp to put forward a credible economic case against enlargement.

Negotiations with the ten candidate countries are on schedule to finish before the December 12 Copenhagen summit, but a number of difficult issues including funding especially in agriculture have yet to be finalised.

Mr Cowen said there had been a huge amount achieved over the past few months by both the EU negotiators and the candidate countries. “When you consider that most of them have come from a totalitarian regime just 12 or 13 years ago and are now functioning market economies with democratic governments and independent judiciaries,” he said.