A referendum on the controversial redrafted EU constitution was ruled out by Portugal yesterday after pressure from Gordon Brown and President Sarkozy.

The Prime Minister and Mr Sarkozy called José Sócrates, the Portuguese Prime Minister, to insist that a popular ballot was not necessary.

The decision by Portugal not to hold a referendum but to ratify the treaty through its parliament will come as a huge relief to Downing Street and the Élysée Palace, which feared extra pressure on them to hold a public vote. The revelation of top-level phone calls will, though, only increase suspicions that the European political elite have coordinated efforts to avoid a repeat of the referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005 that sank the proposed constitution and plunged the EU into a two-year crisis.

Mr Sócrates is also understood to have called Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, to ask her view before announcing his decision.

He told Portuguese MPs: “A referendum in Portugal would jeopardise, without any reason to do so, the full legitimacy of the ratification by national parliaments that is taking place in all the other European countries.”

As with Labour’s last manifesto, Mr Sócrates had promised a referendum on the EU constitution during election campaigning. Like Mr Brown, Mr Sócrates argued yesterday that the pledge no longer applied because the new treaty did not create a stand-alone European constitution but instead amended previous treaties.

The document, renamed the Lisbon Treaty after a signing ceremony last month that Mr Brown missed because he arrived late, introduces the new positions of an EU “foreign minister” and full-time President of the European Council as well as ending national vetoes in dozens of policy areas. The Portuguese move means that the Irish Republic, which has a tradition of public votes on big issues, remains the only country in the 27-member EU where a referendum will be held.

Ratifying the treaty smoothly has become one of the top priorities of Slovenia, which took over the EU presidency from Portugal on January 1. Senior Slovenian ministers have admitted that they will not tackle anything deemed too controversial in EU states where ratification is most controversial – Britain and the Republic.

NO, AND NO AGAIN

— In 2005 the European constitution was derailed by two key referendums

— 55 per cent of French voters rejected it despite the support of both main parties

— 61.6 per cent of Dutch voters rejected it despite the united backing of the main political parties, trade union movements and most leading newspapers

Source: Times archives

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