The results from Ireland's referendum in full

As celebrations go it was not a typically Irish affair. Late on Friday night the key figures in the Libertas group, which had led the successful campaign in the republic for a no vote on the European Union’s Lisbon constitutional treaty, gathered in the bar of the Burlington hotel in the centre of Dublin. The atmosphere was surprisingly sober.

Declan Ganley, the 39-year-old London-born entrepreneur, had just played a key role in one of the most crushing defeats that the Irish and European political establishments had ever suffered. His organisation, a think tank containing no elected politicians, had come from nowhere to achieve a result that has sent shockwaves throughout the EU.

Irish politicians, pundits and businessmen had been almost as one in urging the country’s people to support the treaty that would drive forward the federalist aims of the union.

Yet, against all predictions, the voters had refused, returning a no verdict by the margin of 53.4% to 46.6%.

After that, all Ganley wanted was a soft drink and the chance to chat to family and friends. He is a teetotaller. The man who had left Europe shaken and stirred was having nothing stronger than a glass of Coca-Cola.

Even if he were a drinker, he might have held off. He knew that the revellers were celebrating victory in a battle, not a war. He was still in campaign mode as the crowd in the hotel bar congratulated him.

“This is just the first part,” he said. “There is more to come and this is not over at all. We are going to have to watch what happens now.” Also present was Jens-Peter Bonde, a bespectacled, jovial, grey-haired Danish MEP who campaigns for more democracy in Europe. He was one of many nonIrish campaigners who had travelled to Dublin to add their weight to calls for a no vote in the final week before Thursday’s referendum.

“They will come back to Ireland with more protocols and some changes,” Bonde warned Ganley.

“Don’t worry,” the Galway businessman replied, reassuring him that he was well aware of the EU hierarchy’s power to protect its interests. “You cut off its head and it just grows more.”

Around them, Libertas campaigners relived the highlights of the campaign and wondered about what they would do if there were a second referendum on the treaty. “Our posters would simply read, ‘No means No’,” one said.

It is an argument that is hard to contradict. But while the only people among the EU’s 27-member nations to be given a vote on the Lisbon treaty have rejected it, the European political elite was this weekend closing ranks and working out how best to save it. The question is: can it succeed?

A deathly quiet fell over the European commission building in Brussels on Friday evening as gloomy Eurocrats hid behind their office doors to receive the stinging verdict delivered on their project by the voters of Ireland.

“The political reality is a nightmare,” said one civil servant propping up the commission’s private bar. “Now the blame game starts.”

He was not wrong. The initial official reaction to the result was that the verdict of the Irish people “should be respected”. However, it soon became clear that they were regarded as having made a terrible mistake. European politicians queued up to lecture them on the folly of their ways.

“It is not truly democratic that less than a million people can decide the fate of almost half a billion Europeans,” said a dejected Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the German leader of the European Greens.

“We are incredibly disappointed,” said Axel Schäfer, a member of the German Bundestag committee on EU affairs. “We think it is a real cheek that the country that has benefited most from the EU should do this. There is no other Europe than this treaty.”

Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian president, was equally critical, calling for states obstructing integration to be left out of the EU. “Now is the time for a courageous choice by those who want coherent progress in building Europe, leaving out those who, despite solemn signed pledges, threaten to block it,” he said.

There was even a lesson in group loyalty from the Balkans. “Now that they have used the accession and structural funds, when they developed enormously, I’m a little surprised that the solidarity is at an end,” said Stipe Mesic, the Croatian president. EVEN in Brussels, however, some people was celebrating the result. In the shadow of the commission’s Berlaymont headquarters, Eurosceptics from Ireland, the UK and France gathered in Kitty O’Shea’s, an Irish bar, to down pints of Guinness and toast the victorious end of their campaign.

As the results trickled through on a large screen showing RTE, the Irish broadcaster, loud cheers could be heard from the jubilant crowd. “The only people to have a say on the treaty have kicked it into the long grass,” said a gleeful Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence party. “This means that the British government must halt the ratification of the treaty.”

Emmanuel Bordez, a member of the Mouvement pour la France party, said many in France welcomed the no vote after feeling “cheated and despised” by their leaders for ignoring their own rejection of the treaty’s proposals in a referendum.

France and Holland had voted down the European constitution in 2005, only for 95% of the document to reappear as the Lisbon treaty, which was signed last December.

“We have taken the vampire out of its box and killed it three times now. They have to listen to us,” said Bordez.

There were few signs that “they” were listening. Among heads of state, only one spoke out against the treaty.

On Friday afternoon, Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president, said the Irish vote should herald the treaty’s death blow. “With today’s decision by Irish voters, the Lisbon treaty project is finished and ratification will not continue,” he said.

His government yesterday reiterated its intention to ratify the treaty – it is one of eight countries other than Ireland not yet to have done so – but his assessment of the Irish referendum’s outcome will not be ignored by those fighting for the public’s right to have their say. It was, he said, “a victory of freedom and common sense over artificial, elitist projects and European bureaucracy”.

Such sentiments will haunt the meeting of European leaders at a summit in Brussels which will begin on Thursday. What should have been a pleasant two-day summer summit discussing the roles of the new EU president and foreign minister has become a fraught meeting that must wrestle with a seemingly insoluble problem.

The Lisbon treaty requires all 27 countries to sign up to it if it is to become law. Until then all its provisions are pending. Simply put, Ireland must ratify it to make it law. And the Irish constitution requires that any such changes must be put to the people in a referendum. With that not a prospect in the immediate future, the EU could fall into stasis.

While the EU ground to a halt in 2005 after the French and Dutch no votes, forcing the bloc into a “period of reflection”, the buck has this time been passed to Ireland to sort out its own “domestic problem”.

Yesterday Alain Lamassoure, a French MEP and spokesman on European affairs for President Nicolas Sarkozy, said it was up to the Irish to find a way out of the impasse.

“The solution must be proposed by the country that creates the problem,” he said. “It was the French, responsible for the crisis in 2005, who pushed the treaty of Lisbon. Now the ball is in the Irish court.”

On Friday, Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, had expressed the same view. “The responsibility of ratification is a national one,” he said.

The Irish, however, have indicated that a second referendum is unlikely. The Nice treaty, which received a no vote in June 2001, was put to the Irish people again the following year with a positive result. But politicians are wary of the long-term effects of constantly going back to the electorate and inviting them to change their minds on European affairs.

“The government have to accept the verdict of the people and operate within the very considerable constraints it imposes upon us in representing Ireland in other countries,” said Brian Lenihan, the finance minister. “We made our best effort with this particular treaty. We are in uncharted waters.”

Brian Cowen, the Irish prime minister, can expect a tough time when he turns up in Brussels this week. “I remember going to [EU] council meetings after Nice was voted down,” recalled one Irish cabinet minister. “We were not the most popular guys in the room, I can tell you that. The change in attitude towards us was incredible.”

This weekend it became clear that the “core” European states of France and Germany were preparing to push on with integration by hook or by crook.

On Friday, Sarkozy issued a joint statement with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. “The Lisbon treaty has been signed by the heads of state and government of 27 member states and the ratification process has been completed in 18 countries. We therefore hope that the other member states will pursue the ratification process,” it said.

France will play a key role in the forthcoming negotiations as it will assume the rotating presidency of the EU at the beginning of next month. Yesterday, speaking at a joint press conference with President George W Bush, Sarkozy said the Irish vote “won’t make my task as president of the EU any easier” but called the turn of events “fascinating all the same”.

The first EU summit he will host had been timed to coincide with the July 14 French national holiday, but now there will be little to celebrate: almost the entire agenda of the French presidency had been tied to the idea of a “oui” to the slimmed-down treaty, allowing Europe to push ahead with ambitious defence projects and name a foreign minister and president. Sarkozy had also planned to push French ideas on immigration, energy and farming. All that is in doubt.

Now the drive will probably be towards finding a “legal arrangement” whereby the countries that have ratified the treaty by the deadline of December 31 can push on with those efforts, with the Irish left on the sidelines.

“There are always possibilities to find specific methods of cooperating,” said Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the French minister for Europe. The aim would be to allow Ireland to remain a member of the EU and of the single currency, while being excluded from the creation of an EU president and foreign minister.

Officials emphasised this weekend that there were no firm plans. “There are different potential solutions,” said a French diplomat. “One could be a special protocol for Ireland or different forms of opt-outs. We are waiting to hear what Ireland wants to do.”

Some EU officials were pointing towards attaching a protocol to the treaty allowing Irish “opt-outs” on issues such as abortion, tax and defence as the simplest way of breaking the impasse. The document would then have to be passed by an Irish referendum.

“It was the method used when the Danes first rejected the Maastricht treaty,” said an EU official. “The second time round they voted yes.”

Another option would be to postpone ratification of the treaty until the accession of Croatia to the EU next year. An “accession treaty” would then bring Ireland back into the fold because its constitution does not require a referendum on such documents. Certain key elements of the existing treaty would drop out, however. IN the meantime, secret discussions are expected to continue, as they have done already, about the finer details of the current treaty and who can fill the new roles.

Tony Blair is still considered as a candidate for president. Indeed, some Brussels wags suggested this weekend that he should be encouraged to use the diplomatic skills that he is forging as a Middle East peace envoy in resolving the impasse over the Libson treaty.

Securing alternative legal arrangements will be complicated and a political minefield but the issue is expected to be discussed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers tomorrow.

Last Friday, just hours after their initial elation about the no vote, even jubilant Eurosceptics could see the writing on the wall. “Every time there is a referendum and the answer is no, they still carry on regardless with the EU project,” said Farage.

In Britain the government was desperately trying to hold to its line that parliament should press ahead with ratifying the treaty. On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, insisted that the Lisbon agreement was not dead. “Only those who previously wished to dance on the grave of this treaty, even before the Irish referendum, are declaring it dead,” he said.

The minister echoed the mantra of the Brussels establishment that the problem is an Irish one, not a European one. “The Irish government needs to come to the European council meeting next week to tell us, the UK government and other governments in the EU, how they think we should be taking this forward based on the sovereign decision of the Irish people,” he said.

On the same programme William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, insisted that the Irish vote should force Gordon Brown to call a halt to Britain’s treaty bill, which is going through its final stages in parliament.

“The British government says that it will respect the result in Ireland. If it did so it would immediately halt the ratification process in Britain because there is no reason for other countries to continue ratifying the treaty other than a hope of bullying Ireland into voting a second time,” he said.

Brown is understood privately to be very concerned about the prospect of Ireland being pressured into accepting a “two-speed Europe”, with it put in the slow lane. He is said to be prepared to tell EU officials that the whole treaty should be dropped rather than let the Irish be hung out to dry.

He would find support for that view within his party. Dozens of Labour ministers, back-benchers and policy advisers gathered yesterday at a London conference organised by the left-wing Compass group. The prevailing view was that Brown should call a pause in the process to reflect on the implications of the Irish vote.

Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham who came third in last year’s deputy leadership contest, said: “We can’t just press on relentlessly with the treaty and disrespect what the people have said.”

Even ardent pro-Europeans warned that the government could not continue as if nothing had changed. Keith Vaz, a former Europe minister, said: “We now have to think very long and hard about what has happened.”

Despite the outrage of antiBrussels campaigners, it seems almost certain that the treaty bill will complete its final stage in the Lords this week. The balance of power in the upper house is held by the Liberal Democrats whose leader, Nick Clegg, has indicated that he will still order his peers to vote with the government.

The Tories plan a series of Commons skirmishes, with an opposition day debate on Wednesday and a likely assault on Brown at prime minister’s questions. The government will hope to limp through the week until the EU leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday – when ministers will be praying that a way out of the deadlock can be found.

Why the Irish said no

— The victory for the no campaign was truly one for the Irish people rather than the political class. Among the parties, only Sinn Fein, which attracted just 5% of votes at the last general election, was against ratification of the EU treaty

— Surveys showed that the urban working class, rural dwellers, the Catholic right and the hard left formed the unlikely alliance that led to the antis winning

— The complexity of the treaty meant that its contents were barely debated. Even Brian Cowen, the prime minister, admitted that he had not read it the whole way through

— Other issues relating to Ireland’s EU membership were given more prominence than the treaty itself. Key among them were fears that the country’s advantageous tax regime would be removed by EU diktat and that its military neutrality might be affected by the proposed EU defence force. There were also rumblings about the country’s loss of an EU commissioner and the halving of its voting weight on the EU council

— The Sunday Times had campaigned for a no vote, publishing the treaty in full. The newspaper has a readership of more than 360,000 people in Ireland. Yesterday Le Monde, the French daily, laid some of the “blame” for the result at our door

The treaty that the voters rejected

The key features of the treaty rejected by Irish voters are:

EU president: a powerful new figurehead would replace the rotating six-month EU presidency and give the bloc more continuity.

EU foreign minister: a new post combining two jobs, intended to give Europe more political clout on the world stage.

Voting weights: a phased redistribution of voting weights between the 27 member states. It introduces qualified majority voting based on a “double majority” of 55% of member states, accounting for 65% of the EU’s population.

European commission: a smaller EU executive, with fewer commissioners than there are member states, from 2014.

New powers: for the European commission, parliament and Court of Justice, particularly in justice and home affairs.

Removal of national vetoes: on budgetary matters, defence cooperation, sport and culture.

Nine countries have still to ratify the treaty out of a total of 27: the UK, Ireland, Czech Republic, Holland, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Cyprus.

And how Eurocrats may try to wriggle around the no vote:

Heap pressure on the Irish
A concerted effort will be made to encourage the Irish government to put the treaty to the public again. However, Brian Cowen, the Irish prime minister, indicated this was unlikely, saying there would be “no quick fix”.

Move the goalposts
French and German officials are already talking about coming to an alternative “legal arrangement”, which would allow Ireland to remain in the EU but outside the new provisions introduced by the Lisbon treaty. This will be a legal and political minefield, but it could involve a protocol giving the Irish extra assurances on sensitive issues such as abortion, taxation and defence.

Delay, then fudge
The 27 member states could delay the ratification process until late 2009 or early 2010, when Croatia joins the EU, and then add aspects of the Lisbon treaty to the “accession treaty” that will bring the Balkan state into the union. This would allow the Irish government to bypass another referendum.

The one they will not consider
Of course, the treaty could be scrapped altogether with the current institutional arrangements allowed to carry on. Critics point out that the EU has functioned perfectly well since the constitution drafting process began six years ago.

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