DUBLIN, Ireland — It took years to negotiate, weighs in at 260 pages, is virtually unreadable — and now could be a dead letter.
Irish voters vetoed a painstakingly drafted treaty Friday that had been designed to streamline the European Union. Politicians from all of Ireland’s major parties worked hard to sell the complex, deeply technical document to a confused and suspicious public.
In the referendum, 53.4 percent of voters rejected the treaty.
Only Ireland put the treaty before the voters. The other 26 members are ratifying it through their parliaments, in part fearful of what happened to its predecessor, an even bigger, more ambitious constitution that French and Dutch voters torpedoed in 2005.
To become law, the treaty must be unanimously approved by all 27 EU nations. But Ireland’s constitution requires EU treaties be put to a vote .
The overwhelming majority of Ireland’s politicians supported the Treaty of Lisbon, named after the city where the charter was signed by all member governments in December 2007. But they found it impossible to sell.
“If I was ever in charge of producing another treaty, I would say strongly to everyone at the table: Would you put something into it that’s a big-ticket item that you can actually sell to people? Because this was full of technical detail,” said Mary Hanafin, a government minister charged with drumming up support.
This is the second time that Ireland has voted against an EU treaty. The last time, in 2001, Ireland negotiated with EU partners to produce an appendix emphasizing Ireland’s independence and staged a vote a year later, this time achieving a “yes” majority.
Prime Minister Brian Cowen rued the fact that the government found itself on the defensive because many groups opposed to the treaty successfully played on people’s fears it would mean a loss of national sovereignty.
Anti-treaty groups from the left and right mobilized “no” voters by contending that the treaty would empower EU chiefs in Brussels, Belgium, to force Ireland to change core policies — including its military neutrality and its ban on abortion as well as low business taxes.
Cowen and opposition leaders insisted that was all nonsense.
