Dealing with Ireland's No

The shock waves from Ireland's vote against the Lisbon treaty will reverberate around the European Union and beyond for many years. European leaders were preparing to focus on pressing external challenges such as climate change, energy security, Russia policy and E.U. enlargement; now they will have to turn inward once again to put time and energy into fixing the E.U.'s creaking institutions. The rest of the world may conclude that Europe's ambition to play a greater role on the world stage should not be taken too seriously: the treaty's biggest aim — to better coordinate the members' foreign policies — will certainly be delayed and may never happen.

The Lisbon treaty, the fruit of seven years of interminable negotiations, cannot enter into force unless ratified by all 27 member states. Eighteen have ratified it in their parliaments and a further eight are due to do so later this year. Only Ireland chose to ratify by referendum.

Many Europeans are surprised that 53% of the Irish, who have done so well out of E.U. membership, should vote against the treaty. All their political leaders bar Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, and all the mainstream newspapers, called for a yes. But Ireland's voters reacted against the establishment telling them what to do by giving it a kicking. A slick no campaign played on fears that the treaty would lead to higher taxes (untrue) and deprive Ireland of its right to appoint an E.U. commissioner (true). The yes campaign failed to provide good reasons for supporting a document that promised mere technical changes to E.U. institutions.

Richer and better educated people tended to vote for the treaty, while working-class Irish mostly opposed it. A similar social division over attitudes to the E.U. is apparent in many European countries. Euro-skeptics are right to portray the E.U. as an élite project that fails to connect with ordinary citizens. Yet pro-Europeans are also right to ask whether voters should have to pronounce on a highly complex legal text that would make no impact on their daily lives.

What happens next is far from clear. Most E.U. governments think current Brussels institutions are hopelessly inadequate. For example, three individuals — the Commissioner for External Relations, the High Representative and the Foreign Minister of the country holding the rotating presidency — try to represent the E.U. externally. This ineffective system causes much confusion in places like Beijing, Moscow and Washington. The treaty would merge the three jobs into one permanent post, supported by an embryonic E.U. foreign ministry.

So the governments will not abandon their quest for better institutions. Nor will they renegotiate the treaty: they fear that to amend one bit of what is a package of finely balanced compromises could lead to other bits unraveling. That leaves two options. One is to bury the Lisbon treaty but try to save some of its key provisions. A few of them, designed to improve cooperation in matters of justice and foreign policy, could perhaps be introduced without a new treaty. Furthermore, the prospect of Croatian membership, expected in two or three years, offers opportunities. Every time a country joins the E.U., voting rules need to be adjusted. Croatia's accession treaty could include the simplified procedure ("double majority voting") that is in the Lisbon treaty.

The other, more likely, option is for the governments to press ahead with the Lisbon treaty in the hope that the Irish will change their mind. The E.U. could offer the Irish a protocol to clarify that the treaty does not affect national powers on taxation, and a promise to use the Croatian accession treaty to restore the one-commissioner-per-country rule. The Irish would then vote again on the Lisbon treaty next summer. But that would be risky: the E.U. would appear arrogantly dismissive of the June 12 result, and the Irish could vote no again.

If the Irish did vote no twice, many countries would want to move ahead without them. Legally, the other 26 could renounce the existing E.U. treaties and recreate them with one fewer member. But that maneuver could not work unless all the members were firmly committed to pushing Ireland out of the E.U. Some of the more Euro-skeptic members, such as Britain and the Czech Republic, might thwart such an effort. But then the majority of the member states could try to create a two-speed Europe: the Irish, British and others reluctant to integrate would be left outside a new club. If that course is pursued, Ireland's referendum will have set off a chain of events that breaks up the E.U. as we know it.

Charles Grant is director of the Centre for European Reform