Could the EU accept an Irish no?

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Jon Bright (London, OK): Mark Mardell's excellent euroblog has a post asking whether Ireland could vote no to the Lisbon treaty. He says it's too early to assume the "yes" is set in stone:

Some are already suggesting the foundations for rejections are there.

Euractiv cites an opinion poll that shows 33% of voters are undecided.

An interesting paper from the Campaign for European Reform lists more factors that could encourage a “No” vote: from the investigation into the financial affairs of Bertie Ahern, which may make the government unpopular, to the Irish Independent reprinting articles from the Daily Telegraph (although it wrongly states the Telegraph doesn’t have a correspondent in Brussels).

In Ireland, the argument is already underway. There’s a new group call Libertas campaigning against the treaty. Its arguments are not the traditional British ones about sovereignty and an increase in the power of “Brussels” but about hard economics.

Their argument is the contention that: “The threat of the Treaty provisions is that the EU could force Ireland to behave like a ‘rich’ economy in terms of regulatory and other breaks for Foreign Direct Investment. The implications of this are potentially devastating.”

While most people are probably correct in assuming that a yes will be squeezed through, he does point out that Ireland voted "No" to the treaty of Nice in 2001 (which paved the way for the accession of 10 of the Eastern bloc states, among other things). They were asked again in 2002, where a higher turnout referendum produced the "right" result. Would that happen again with the Lisbon treaty? Mardell thinks not - an Irish no would mean a no overall. The referendum then, which is likely to be announced shortly and could turn up as early as June, will be a crunch one - and it will be interesting to watch, after all the fuss here, how many actually turn out there to take up their opportunity to have a say.

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