Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty should not be allowed to develop into a crisis, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said today, calling for the ratification process to continue elsewhere.
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"The Irish people have spoken. We must accept it," Mr Sarkozy told a joint news conference alongside visiting US President George W Bush.
"Today, 18 European states have ratified. The others must continue to ratify -- that is also the intention of (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown, who told me so on the telephone yesterday -- so that this Irish incident does not become a crisis," Mr Sarkozy said.
The British Government said earlier that Taoiseach Brian Cowen must come up with a solution to the crisis and dismissed calls to abandon the treaty. Britain's Europe Minister Jim Murphy insisted that the vote in Ireland did not mean that the treaty was dead.
“Only those who previously wished to dance on the grave of this treaty, even before the Irish referendum, are declaring it dead,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
He said that it was still a good treaty for Britain and suggested Ireland could find itselft isolated as the other member states complete the ratification process towards the end of the year.
“When we get to the end of that process probably towards the end of this year, then it is important to reflect then — is it 26 governments who have ratified and is it one that hasn’t, and then we discuss the way forward,” he said.
He said that Dublin Government needed to come forward with proposals to resolve the crisis when EU leaders meet in Brussels at the end of next week.
“The Irish government need to come to the European Council meeting next week to tell us, the United Kingdom Government and other governments in the European Union, how they think we should be taking this forward based on the sovereign decision of the Irish people,” he said.
The Tories said that after the rejection of the treaty’s forerunner — the now abandoned EU constitution — by French and Dutch voters in 2005, EU leaders should finally accept that their blueprint for reform was dead.
“I think our government should have the courage to say to other European leaders, now we have got to recognise reality,” shadow foreign secretary William Hague told the Today programme.
“The people of France, the people of Holland voted against a very similar document, the EU constitution. Now the people of Ireland have voted against this.
“It is time to turn away from this whole centralising project and concentrate on things that really matter".
But Germany said again today that the European Union may still be able to go ahead with the integration process without Ireland.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on a visit to China, told reporters that EU foreign ministers would discuss the outcome of Ireland's referendum together with the Government.
"(The question is whether) Ireland for a certain time can clear the way for an integration of the remaining 26 (member countries)," he said, adding that it was not an easy legal issue.
In a statement yesterday, Germany called Ireland's rejection of the EU reform treaty in a referendum a "hard blow" but urged other member states to continue with ratification and said the treaty should still come into force.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and other EU leaders have said the referendum process of the treaty must continue despite Ireland's No vote.
Mr Barroso said the Government "needs to assess what this [No vote] means for the process". He added that the Commission would hear next week how Mr Cowen proposes to advance the process.
"The European Council meets next week – and that is the place where joint decisions should be taken on issues that concern us all. The “No” vote in Ireland has not solved the problems which the Lisbon Treaty is designed to solve.
"The ratification process is made up of 27 national processes, 18 Member States have already approved the Treaty, and the European Commission believes that the remaining ratifications should continue to take their course."
The European Commission President said the European Council "wanted to hear Brian Cowen’s analysis, as well as his ideas on how to address the concerns expressed by those who chose to vote No."
Only Vaclav Klaus, the Eurosceptic Czech president whose country has yet to complete ratification, insisted the Lisbon Treaty vote was a "victory of freedom and reason over artificial elitist projects and European bureaucracy.
“The Lisbon Treaty project ended today with the decision of the Irish voters and its ratification cannot be continued,” Mr Klaus said yesterday in a statement posted on his website.
“The result is hopefully a clear message to everybody. It is a victory of freedom and reason over artificial elitist projects and European bureaucracy.”
Mr Klaus was the first EU leader to break ranks, amid concerted calls across the continent for other member states to carry on with ratification.
The Czech presidency is a largely ceremonial post and it was unclear whether the Czech Republic — one of eight states still to ratify the treaty — will now abandon the process.