BARROSO REACTION:EUROPEAN COMMISSION president José Manuel Barroso has said the Lisbon Treaty is still alive and has urged other EU states to continue to ratify it despite the Irish No vote. He also said yesterday that Taoiseach Brian Cowen had told him in a telephone call after the referendum result that he also believed the treaty was not yet dead.
“As far as I understood also from my conversation to prime minister Cowen, he also believes that the treaty is not dead. I believe the treaty is alive and we should now try to find a solution,” said Mr Barroso, who noted that 18 of the 27 EU states had ratified it.
He said that Mr Cowen would be invited to present his views on the Irish referendum result and how best to move forward at next week’s EU summit meeting in Brussels. But he also insisted that ratification of the Lisbon Treaty should continue across Europe.
“The No vote in Ireland has not solved the problems which the Lisbon Treaty is designed to solve . . . The European Commission believes that the remaining ratifications should continue to take their course,” Mr Barroso told a packed news conference.
He denied that Irish voters mattered less than French voters considering that ratification of the EU constitution was halted shortly after the French voted No in May 2005. “All the member states have exactly, exactly the same dignity, and for me the opinion of Ireland counts as much as the opinion of France,” said Mr Barroso, who added that he was convinced Ireland was committed to playing a full and active role in Europe.
The Lisbon Treaty cannot be implemented unless all 27 member states ratify the treaty, but it is possible that a new legal route to implement the Lisbon reforms could be agreed by EU leaders, leaving Ireland sidelined in Europe.
Eurosceptic groups strongly criticised the decision to continue ratification, saying EU leaders had made it clear that the democratic voice of the Irish people would be ignored. “They will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of a European state,” said Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party. “This reaction shows more than ever the gaping chasm that exists between the people and the politicians. What part of ‘No’ don’t they understand?”
The EU executive’s message that the treaty had not been killed off by the referendum result was reflected in co-ordinated statements issued from Paris, Berlin and from senior MEPs in the European Parliament.
The chairman of the constitutional affairs committee, Jo Leinen, repeated his warning to Ireland that it could not hold up the rest of Europe from moving ahead with reforms. The leader of the Green group, Daniel Cohn-Bendit MEP, said that the ratification process should continue because the reforms were needed.
“More than half the Irish decided not to turn out and the majority of those that did voted No. They have the democratic right to do so, but it is not truly democratic that less than a million people can decide the fate of almost half a billion Europeans,” Mr Cohn-Bendit said.
Slovenia, the current holder of the six-month rotating EU presidency, said that it deeply regretted the outcome of the Irish vote. “I will invite the Irish prime minister to explain the reasons for the rejection of the treaty by the Irish people. We will discuss about the situation and look for the ways to move forward,” said prime minister Janez Jansa.
“The Lisbon Treaty has already been ratified by two-thirds of EU member states. The treaty is necessary to make Europe more efficient, more democratic and transparent,” he added.