Ireland approves EU treaty the second time around
Economy key in 2-to-1 vote
DUBLIN - They rejected it only 16 months ago. But in a stunning about-face spurred by economic turmoil, Ireland’s voters have overwhelmingly approved a far-reaching treaty meant to consolidate the power of the European Union and reorganize the way it does business, the government announced yesterday.
Ireland’s approval of the pact, known as the Lisbon Treaty, removes one of the biggest stumbling blocks to its eventual enactment by Europe as a whole. The treaty would give Europe a more powerful foreign policy chief and its first full-time president, and strengthen the role of the European Parliament; it is also meant to more clearly delineate the relationship between national Legislatures and Europe.
“My message today is very simple: Thank you, Ireland,’’ said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, in Brussels. “Ireland has given Europe a new chance.’’
Ireland went to the polls on Friday. In the final count issued yesterday afternoon, yes votes outnumbered the no votes by about 2 to 1.
Signed by European leaders in 2007, the Lisbon Treaty is the result of years of painstaking negotiations among countries trying to retain their national identities and hang on to power while ceding some control to an ever more integrated Europe.
A reflection of the European Union’s rapid expansion in the past five years, to 27 members from 15, the treaty must be adopted by all member countries to take force. Now only two countries are left: Poland and the Czech Republic.
The lopsidedness of the vote in Ireland reflects both the success of a strong pro-treaty campaign, backed by much of Ireland’s business and political establishment, and Ireland’s dire economic situation.
Ireland joined what was then the European Community in 1973. Buoyed by European money, it grew to become one of Europe’s great success stories, its peat bogs and grazing pastures giving way to gleaming semiconductor plants and thriving suburbs. But in the past 18 months, the nation has suffered from soaring unemployment and a deep real estate collapse.
With the economy kept from imploding largely because of European Union support in the form of liquidity from the European Central Bank, many voters apparently decided that this was not a good time to be scorning their European neighbors.
A no vote by Ireland would have buried the Lisbon Treaty for good, and analysts said it would have killed momentum for enlarging the 27-nation bloc.
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