In yet another blow by the voters to the bureaucrats and political class that run Europe, Irish voters rejected on Thursday the Lisbon Treaty by a 7.8% margin. The turnout was low which was expected to boost chances for passage but it didn’t turn out that way. From the New York Times:
Europe was thrown into political turmoil on Friday by Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, a painstakingly negotiated blueprint for consolidating the European Union’s power and streamlining its increasingly unwieldy bureaucracy. The defeat of the treaty, by a margin of 53.4 percent to 46.6 percent, was the result of a highly organized “no” campaign that had played to Irish voters’ deepest visceral fears about the European Union. For all its benefits, many people in Ireland and in Europe feel that the union is remote, undemocratic and ever more inclined to strip its smaller members of the right to make their own laws and decide their own futures.
The repercussions of Friday’s vote are enormous. To take effect, the treaty must be ratified by all 27 members of the European Union. So the defeat by a single country, even one as small as Ireland, has the potential effect of stopping the whole thing cold.
Video on the Irish vote from the UK Guardian.
More on this, including reaction from Europe, over the weekend.