Treaty is not dead yet, say EU partners

IRELAND may have voted against the Lisbon treaty but the very clear message from the EU member states was that the treaty is not dead yet.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen will be asked to propose a solution to the crisis caused by the rejection when he attends the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels next week.

Following a series of phone calls between the Taoiseach, several European capitals, including London, Berlin and Paris and Brussels, all agreed that the ratification process should continue.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said all 27-member countries had signed the treaty and they had a joint responsibility to come forward with a solution.

“Mr Cowen also believes the treaty is not dead — the treaty is alive and we should find a solution,” he told a press conference in Brussels as the results of the referendum came in.

He refused to comment on the possibility of Ireland holding a second vote but said: “We will listen to Mr Cowen and I believe the Irish government is in a better position to explain to us the reasons behind the no vote and help us find a solution to this collective challenge.”

He denied that Ireland, as a small country, would be treated differently than France was when it rejected the Constitution and said that countries continued to ratify until the decision was made to abandon the constitution.

However, he said that as two-thirds of member states have ratified Lisbon, because they believed it to be a response to the problems faced by the enlarged union, their decision should also be respected.

“Ireland is in a minority and other countries must be allowed to express their opinion,” he said.

When governments sign an international treaty, they have a joint responsibility to each other, and he believed that they would work together to find a solution.

The commission will carry out a survey in Ireland on the reasons for the no vote in the next few days, which is expected to feed into the discussion at next week’s summit.

Legally, if one member state fails to ratify a treaty, then it falls. However, the indications from other EU capitals are that they will try hard to retain the treaty and Ireland will have the option of holding a second referendum, perhaps with some extra guarantees, or side-line itself in the EU.

A spokesperson for the Dutch government said that there were no neat legal solutions hidden away to resolve the situation.

British MEP Andrew Duff said: “If the Taoiseach cannot bring a solution in his briefcase on Thursday, it is all off is the obvious conclusion”.