Salvage operation

This article was orginally published in the Financial Times on 17 June 2008.

Nobody who knows Irish politics can have been truly surprised by Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. There are many causes. Ireland is a place where nationalist identity is strong. Its post-colonial relationship with the UK is inevitably complicated. Less obvious is its love-hate affair with the US Although the Irish republican cause relied on US support, Sinn Féin is the fiercest defender of Irish ‘neutrality' vis-à-vis Nato (and Anglo-US imperialism). Meanwhile, the Irish Right has borrowed the language (and money) of American neo-conservatism in the belief that a strong European Union imperils Nato and the transatlantic partnership.

Former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald complains that the Irish are too courteous to mention their disgust at corruption in high places. They are also too polite to speak openly about their hostility to immigration, mainly from other EU countries. Both factors played their part in turning voters against the Dublin political establishment and hence against the Lisbon Treaty.

The pro-Lisbon political parties ran a poor campaign: late, fractious and lacking in verve. At no time during the campaign were the true consequences for Ireland and Europe of a No vote starkly spelled out.

Whatever the reasons, the result is devastating for the EU both internally and externally. It has stalled in a dramatic way the efforts of the EU, going back several years, to settle its constitutional future. Above all, it is a setback for the growth of European parliamentary democracy. Plans to make the governance of the Union more efficient and transparent are lost. And the EU will not, after all, enjoy the greater role in international affairs that was prescribed by Lisbon. Global leadership in climate change will be hard to assert. Progress in building common policies in justice and interior affairs, including asylum and immigration, will be negligible. Enlargement of the membership of the EU beyond Croatia is now impossible.

Assertions from Berlin and Paris that the Irish No is an Irish problem that needs to be resolved in Ireland are unhelpful. The Irish establishment has been badly, if deservedly dished; it will take a long time to recover its nerve. Ireland will not be bullied into holding another referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon. If there was one common thread running through the complaints of the nay-sayers it was that the Brussels juggernaut sweeps all before it regardless of democratic decisions. That typical eurosceptic sentiment is shared widely elsewhere, especially in Britain, and it would be hugely aggravated by a decision of the leaders of the larger states or the EU institutions to carry on regardless.

In legal terms, Ireland's No is just as important as a Yes from its 26 partners. Every EU government has fixed itself with superglue to its veto rights on treaty amendment. Even France and Germany upheld the national veto during the treaty negotiations: it ill behooves them now to question the validity of Ireland's veto.

So a delicate but large-scale salvage operation is needed. Irish prime minister Brian Cowen will not be able to bring to the European Council on 19 June worked-out proposals for a renegotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon that would allow him to win another referendum at home. Non-binding declarations glued on to the back of the treaty are unlikely to convince anyone. Binding protocols, however, would need ratification all over again in 27 member states - a prospect that few of his fellow heads of government are prepared to contemplate. The only concrete decision that the European Council could take would be to declare that they will, in the event, exercise the discretion that they have under Lisbon not to reduce the size of the Commission in 2014. The potential loss of an Irish Commissioner mattered in the referendum campaign - notwithstanding the fact that they stand to lose one anyway under the Treaty of Nice as early as 2009.

Ireland's rejection of a reformed and strengthened Union means that the Union is stuck with the vastly inferior Treaty of Nice, possibly for several years to come. Among the many weak points of Nice, the so-called 'enhanced cooperation' clauses do not really facilitate the creation of core groups of more integrationist minded states - and, in any case, they preclude the formation of a core group in the area of security and defence policy where it is so badly needed. One can be sure that once the inadequacies of the Treaty of Nice, signed in December 2000, get to be fully appreciated in other European capitals, frustration with the Irish will rise.

The European Council would be wise to give Mr Cowen only until its October meeting to come up with a clear proposal on how he wishes to proceed. Meanwhile, every other member state has the right to make its own choice about the Treaty of Lisbon. Most, perhaps all of those which have not yet ratified, will wish to do so - not least in order to make a tacit objection to some Franco-German fantasies about forming immediately a federalist core group. The decision of the UK to complete its parliamentary ratification of Lisbon on 18 June will go some way to restore its moral authority and political credibility in EU circles. The other laggard states are Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

If the Irish veto really proves to be intractable, however, other solutions will be found. A mini-treaty, for example, could establish legal bases for common policies on energy supply and climate change; and the important changes mooted by Lisbon in the field of justice and interior affairs - from which Ireland has an opt-out - could be reintroduced. A treaty on security and defence could be imagined outside the EU framework, realising the greater part of Lisbon's ambitions in this area and, naturally, excluding Ireland. Certain other changes, such as the citizens' initiative to propose legislation, could probably be brought in under the terms of Nice. The longer term constitutional settlement would have to be postponed until after 2014.

Come the autumn, it will be essential for the European Council to act definitively on the fate of Lisbon. Nobody can brook another long and indecisive period of reflection. For Ireland, that will be the time for the biggest decision of all.

Andrew Duff MEP (Liberal/UK) is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the chairman of the Federalist Intergroup of the European Parliament. www.andrewduffmep.org.