E.U. Vows To Salvage Treaty After Veto
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Brussels — European Union leaders vowed to salvage the bloc’s new governing treaty, while leaving open how long it will take to find a way around last week’s veto in Ireland.
Prime Minister Cowen of Ireland resisted setting a deadline to rescue the treaty, which would create the post of full-time E.U. president with the goal of strengthening Europe’s voice on the world stage.
“It is necessary for Ireland to have time now to analyze last week’s vote and explore options,” Mr. Cowen said at the start of an E.U. summit in Brussels yesterday. “It is far too early yet for anyone to put forward proposals.”
Ireland’s veto of the treaty overshadowed a two-day summit that was meant to come to grips with soaring food and oil prices, which have slowed economic growth and raised the specter of higher interest rates.
The Lisbon Treaty, the latest update to the E.U.’s governing articles dating back to the 1950s, was scheduled to take effect in January ahead of next year’s elections to the European Parliament and appointment of a new European Commission.
Irish voters shattered that timetable last week by rejecting the treaty, depriving it of the needed unanimous ratification by all 27 E.U. countries. So far, 19 have ratified it in parliament and the remaining seven plan to follow suit.
There is a “huge conviction to proceed with the ratification process,” the summit’s chairman, Prime Minister Jansa of Slovenia, said. “The ratification process will go on.”
Britain gave the treaty a lift on Wednesday, when Prime Minister Brown whisked it through final passage in the House of Lords in the face of calls by the opposition Conservatives to abandon the document.
Foreign Secretary Miliband of Britain sought to change the subject yesterday, saying that the summit should focus on food and oil prices and escape “the institutional navel-gazing that has preoccupied the European Union for so long.”
Anti-E.U. campaigners in Ireland scored points by arguing that the treaty would hand powers over taxes to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, force Ireland to legalize abortion, or drag the country into foreign wars.
President Sarkozy of France is pressing for Ireland to hold a second referendum — as it did after blocking the European Union’s current treaty in 2001 — once the E.U. offers assurances that those powers won’t be taken away.