Irish voters have rejected the EU's treaty of Lisbon in a referendum, the government acknowledged yesterday, potentially scuppering EU reform plans.
Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern conceded the vote shortly after noon as tallies from around the country showed the treaty had been defeated in an overwhelming number of constituencies.
“It looks like this will be a ‘no’ vote,” Ahern told RTE television. “At the end of the day, for a myriad of reasons, the people have spoken.”
Ireland is one of the most pro-European countries in the bloc and the only one to entrust its voters with a referendum on the treaty, which replaces an EU constitution rejected by Dutch and French voters in 2005.
RTE said tallies showed the treaty would be carried only in a handful of constituencies, mainly in the capital Dublin.
The victory for the “no” camp means a country with fewer than 1 percent of the EU’s 490 million population could wreck a treaty painstakingly negotiated over years by leaders of all 27 member states.
“If the Irish people decide to reject the treaty of Lisbon, naturally, there will be no treaty of Lisbon,” French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said late on Thursday.
However, other French officials have said work on the treaty could continue. France assumes the rotating EU presidency in a matter of weeks and was supposed to be in charge of setting up the new system which would take effect at the start of next year.
The treaty, intended to make the EU stronger and more effective, had the backing of the three main political parties in Ireland, which has prospered under EU membership. Farmers groups, businesses and many labor unions also backed it.
On polling day bookmakers were still taking bets, giving it overwhelming odds to pass.
But while the country ranks in surveys as one of the EU’s most pro-European states, opponents say the treaty reduces small countries’ clout and gives Brussels new foreign and defense policy powers that undermine Ireland’s historic neutrality.
It was not the first time Irish voters have shocked the EU. They almost wrecked the bloc’s plans for eastward expansion in 2001 by rejecting the treaty of Nice, but the government staged a second referendum in which that pact passed.
The government has said it is not considering a re-run this time around.
The treaty of Lisbon envisages a long-term president of the European Council of EU leaders, a stronger foreign policy chief and a mutual defense pact.
Fourteen countries have already ratified the treaty in their national parliaments.
EU leaders meeting in Brussels next week are expected to reaffirm their commitment to it and may ask Ireland to indicate how it intends to proceed.
That would put the onus on Dublin either to seek changes, opt-outs or assurances and put them to a second referendum, or to find a way to allow the others to proceed with the key reforms without Ireland.
France’s European affairs minister said yesterday that the EU could negotiate a “legal arrangement” with Ireland to avert a crisis.
“The most important thing is that the ratification process must continue in the other countries and then we shall see with the Irish what type of legal arrangement could be found,” Jean-Pierre Jouyet told LCI television. “We cannot take a country out of Europe that has been there for 35 years. But we can find specific means of cooperation.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy separately declined to comment on the early results of the Irish referendum but said he had agreed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to issue a joint statement on the outcome.
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