Ireland's referendum results in full

The Irish Prime Minister was facing huge pressure from EU leaders yesterday to keep the Lisbon treaty alive but seemed at a loss to explain how it could be saved after Ireland’s “no” vote.

Brian Cowen is being urged to present a plan for reviving the treaty at the EU summit in Brussels this week, but he knows that if a second referendum were to result in failure it would bring down not only the treaty but his Government as well.

EU leaders united over the weekend to insist that Mr Cowen had to show how the treaty could be saved, possibly with a rerun of the vote next year and extra guarantees for Ireland. Signs are emerging that some EU countries would consider forging ahead in a “two-speed Europe”, leaving Ireland and others behind.

Britain will continue with its treaty ratification through Parliament this week, but it would rather see the treaty fall than go along with any two-speed plan, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday. Mr Miliband, who will be at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg today, said: “There can be no question of bulldozing or bamboozling or ignoring the Irish vote. In the end it is for the Irish Prime Minister to decide what his next moves are. He has got to decide whether or not to apply the last rites. That is his prerogative.”

Mr Miliband said that the idea of a two-speed Europe was “a 1990s agenda, not a 21st-century agenda”.

Two of the most vocal supporters for pushing ahead with the treaty were Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German Foreign Minister. Both had been under consideration for the two big posts created by the treaty: those of EU president and EU foreign minister.

President Sarkozy of France will travel to Prague today to urge the Eurosceptic Czech Government to continue with ratification after President Klaus pronounced it dead. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, will discuss the crisis with Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, of Poland, where the treaty awaits ratification.

Mr Cowen admitted that he had few ideas on how to bridge the seemingly irreconcilable gulf between the Irish “no” vote and the determination among other states to ratify the treaty. “My job is to make sure that our interests are not undermined and to try to find ways forward which are not obvious to me immediately,” Mr Cowen told the state broadcaster RTE radio. “I want Europe to try to provide some of the solution as well.

“A ‘no’ vote does send us into some uncharted territory and we have to try to chart that territory and see what way forward we can achieve. Clearly, if things stay as they are, the Lisbon treaty cannot be ratified. That is the constitutional position.”

EU diplomats said that if Mr Cowen thought that the treaty could be saved, he should tell the European Council on Thursday what could be offered to Ireland in the form of extra protocols or changes. At the very least, Mr Cowen is expected to try to buy time by pledging to attend EU summits in October or December with a plan that would allow the last eight members to complete ratification.

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