“Why all this confusion and crying? She is not dead, but sleeping.”
The Biblical quote (Mark 5:39) refers to a little girl, but many European Union politicians are hoping that the same message will apply to the bloc’s Lisbon Treaty, which Irish voters rejected in a referendum on Thursday, leaving its survival in doubt.
“The treaty is not dead. The EU is constant crisis management: You go from one crisis to another and finally you find a solution,” Finland’s Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb insisted at a meeting with EU counterparts in Luxembourg.
But if the meeting was short on crying, it offered confusion aplenty as ministers debated whether, in fact, there was still a chance of life for Lisbon.
The essential question the EU must now answer is whether there is some way to bring the treaty into force despite the Irish vote.
If that does not happen, analysts warn that the best the EU could face would be a long and painful period of introspection, and the worst would be the bloc’s fragmentation into subgroups who cooperate with one another at different speeds and on different levels.
It is not the first time that the EU has faced crises following rejections of its treaties in national referenda. In 1992 in Denmark, and in 2001 in Ireland, voters gave the thumbs-down to EU texts.
On both occasions, the treaties were “put to sleep” until the countries in question could convince their voters to say yes in repeat referenda a year later — leading some commentators to compare the EU’s treaties with the fairytale Sleeping Beauty, who is cast into a magical sleep until the hero’s kiss awakens her.
But this time, the calendar is not on the EU’s side. The Lisbon Treaty is meant to come into force on Jan. 1, 2009, leaving scant time for Ireland to win concessions and organize a re-vote, even if the government decides to do so — something which is not yet assured.
Moreover, on Jan. 1 the Czech Republic is set to take over the EU’s rotating presidency. The treaty is a highly controversial issue there, casting doubt over whether a Czech presidency would have the political support at home necessary to revive the treaty.
That means that the pressure of solving the crisis falls on France, which is set to take over the EU presidency on July 1.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has invested enormous political capital in the Lisbon Treaty, which he says was his idea.
