DUBLIN, IRELAND — Ireland and the European Union both face a painful dilemma because of Irish voters’ rejection of an important EU treaty, Prime Minister Brian Cowen said Sunday.
Cowen said he wants to ensure that Ireland does not become diplomatically isolated when he attends a European Union leaders’ summit Thursday in Brussels, his first as prime minister.
“Obviously I was hoping to get a win. It was the first political objective I set myself,” said Cowen, a veteran Cabinet member who succeeded Bertie Ahern as prime minister barely a month ago.
Ireland is the only EU member constitutionally obliged to win public backing for the bloc’s treaties, which can become law only if all 27 members ratify them. The other 26 nations are ratifying the Lisbon Treaty — a hard-won blueprint for reforming how the bloc makes decisions — through their national governments.
All 27 governments signed the Lisbon Treaty in the Portuguese capital in December 2007. The treaty sought to salvage many goals of the EU’s previous blueprint for progress, a fully fledged constitution, that French and Dutch voters rejected in 2005 referendums.
Cowen said he must persuade EU allies that last week’s referendum rejection of the treaty creates a problem that all EU nations must help to solve, not Ireland alone. He rejected calls to declare the treaty dead.
“We don’t need to come to a hasty conclusion here. There is a dilemma here for the country and for the union,” Cowen said. “If we can’t come up with any solutions, then obviously this treaty doesn’t proceed.” He said Ireland faces the risk that other EU states will proceed with the treaty’s reform plans and draft new rules that would exclude Ireland from at least some new arrangements. He said other EU leaders might ultimately decide that Ireland must “redefine its relationship to Europe. I want to avoid that situation.” “I passionately believe Ireland’s future is to be in the heart of the European Union. The fact of the matter is there is no obvious solution before us here,” Cowen said.
“We obviously have to reflect the issues and concerns with (EU) colleagues as to why this treaty didn’t proceed as people hoped it would, and sit down with them and see if there is a political way forward here,” he said.
Cowen was speaking to Irish state broadcasters RTE. It was his first interview since Irish voters rejected the treaty in a Thursday referendum on a 53.4 percent “no” vote.
Analysts say the EU could respond to the Irish “no” by drafting special guarantees to the Irish on particularly sensitive issues that mobilized anti-treaty voters — Ireland’s control over its own tax rates, moral policies and military commitments — and then ask Ireland to stage a second referendum.
That was the route taken when Ireland rejected a previous EU treaty in 2001. On that occasion, the Irish government won a second referendum a year later after receiving an appendix to the treaty emphasizing Ireland’s military neutrality.
Ireland received some sympathy for its position Sunday from neighboring Britain, where a vociferous anti-EU lobby has been demanding its own national referendum.
But Foreign Secretary David Miliband emphasized that it was up to Cowen to offer a solution.
“There can be no question of bulldozing or bamboozling or ignoring the Irish vote,” Miliband told the British Broadcasting Corp.
When asked whether he accepted that the treaty was dead because of the Irish vote, Miliband suggested that Cowen wielded the power to kill it.
“I think in the end, it’s for the Irish prime minister to decide what his next moves are. He’s got to decide whether or not to apply the last rites. That’s his prerogative,” he said. “We’ve got to listen to his analysis of what went wrong, and hear what he says about the next step.”
