EU: Irish quarantine?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is on the warpath. He visits Dublin on Monday, just a week after taking over the rotating EU presidency. The French strategy, after Ireland’s referendum rejection of the Lisbon European Union Treaty, is that the show must go on -- with or without the Irish.

Sarkozy will likely persuade the Irish either to vote again, in an echo of Ireland's second referendum on the Nice Treaty in 2002, or Ireland's people will be leapfrogged. Sarkozy has reportedly made it very clear that there will be no renegotiation of a Treaty that was Part II of the EU Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters three years ago. EU Treaty, part trois, will not exist.

Eamon Gilmore, the leader of the opposition Labour party, which backed the Lisbon Treaty, has said that holding a re-run would not work with voters. He could be right. Dutch and French rejections of Part II in 2005 set an important precedent. Negative referendum results on previous treaties had been overturned in a second vote following minor adjustments to the text. The fact this did not happen for the draft constitution will make it more difficult to attempt it for the Lisbon Treaty.  The way several member states avoided holding referenda on the Lisbon Treaty -- arguing that it was a far more modest, technical document than the draft constitution -- led critics to charge that they were simply ignoring hostile public opinion. Any effort to circumvent an initial 'no' vote in Ireland will be denounced as undemocratic.

Member states may simply accept the death of the Lisbon Treaty and attempt to introduce as many of its innovations as possible through other means. Yet political constraints might restrict member states' ability to do so. Efforts to introduce reforms that voters had rejected, through backdoor administrative or judicial channels, would invite accusations that the EU was ignoring the people's will.