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Ireland is busy working on legal wording to make the Lisbon Treaty more palatable to Irish voters, but its EU partners have raised concerns about the scope of the texts and some impatience at the pace of the work.

Last week, officials from Dublin met representatives from the 26 other member states to shed some light on what kind of wording Ireland is looking for in order to ensure the greatest chance that its citizens will vote "Yes" the second referendum on the treaty, scheduled for autumn.

But the reason for the wariness among other capitals is that these texts will take the form of legally-binding protocols, which will be attached to the first legal vehicle available to get them ratified. At the moment, the talk is of Croatia's accession treaty, which will have to pass through all 27 parliaments of the EU.

"We want to make sure it is very specific to Ireland, so we do not get asked why we haven't got guarantees on certain issues," said one diplomat.

A new poll has shown a swing in favour of the Lisbon treaty in Ireland as the main political parties argue about when would be the best time to hold a second referendum on the document.

According to a survey carried out by the Irish Times newspaper, 51 percent are in favour of the treaty while 33 percent would vote against it.

Analysis of the results suggests it is farmers and middle-class voters who have shifted their opinion towards a Yes since the referendum in June last year.

Meanwhile, the least well off tend to be opposed to the treaty.

The swing in Lisbon's favour comes amid the country's convulsions in the economic crisis, which has caused massive job losses.

The Czech EU presidency is to begin the complicated task of providing the legal guarantees for the political concessions that Ireland has received on the rejected Lisbon Treaty.

Work will soon begin between Irish lawyers, the legal services of the Council (representing member states) and the European Commission, to firm up EU promises to that the treaty will not affect Irish neutrality, abortion or tax laws.

The Czech EU presidency is preparing a contingency plan for one of the most sensitive areas in the EU institutional set-up in case Ireland rejects Europe's new treaty for a second time later this year.

According to the Irish Times newspaper, Prague is working on a plan for how to reduce the size of the European Commission should Irish voters once again vote No in autumn.

"On the composition of the commission we have to be ready for both possible scenarios: One scenario is that the Lisbon Treaty enters force at the end this year or we have to act and co-operate in the EU under Nice," deputy prime minister Alexander Vondra told the newspaper.

The rules of the Nice Treaty state that if the number of EU member states reaches 27, the number of commissioners would then be reduced. The EU's pending set of new rules, known as the Lisbon Treaty, however allows the continuation of one commissioner per member state if all EU governments unanimously agree to it.

But the deal struck, which allows the ratification process to resume in Ireland, with a view to ratification by the end of 2009, maintains the package of institutional reforms that will allow the EU to be better able to deal with these long-term political problems.

So, what was agreed and what does it all mean?

A second referendum on a modified Lisbon treaty is the main option for Ireland, according to a report submitted by an cross-party group of deputies in the country's parliament on Thursday (27 November).

The group was set up under the auspices of the Joint Committee on European Affairs with the formal title of the Subcommittee on Ireland's Future in the European Union.

Strasbourg urges ratification before June 2009

Meanwhile, the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee approved on Monday a report urging the Irish government to put forward concrete proposals on the way forward after the referendum to ensure that the Lisbon Treaty is ratified before the 2009 European Parliament elections.

The committee also called on Sweden and the Czech Republic to complete their ratification procedures before the end of 2008. The Swedish parliament is expected to pass the treaty on Thursday.

The question of Ireland's traditional neutrality, which No campaigners argued was under threat from a growing militarisation of the European Union was one of the main reasons people voted No, according to a post-referendum commission poll. Taxation figured equally prominently according to the Eurobarometer survey, as did the loss of a commissioner.

Abortion however did not figure prominently amongst people's concerns, being the reason for casting a ballot against the Lisbon Treaty for just two percent of No voters.

The loss of a commissioner Mr Martin highlighted as one of the more significant points of discussion with other member states.

A fresh poll has suggested the Irish could back the EU's Lisbon treaty in a second attempt, repeating the same scenario as with the vote on the previous EU institutional reform.

The survey published in Irish Times on Monday (17 November) indicates there has been a change of mood among Ireland's voters since the June referendum, as 43 percent of respondents say they would vote for the Lisbon treaty against 39 percent who would vote No and 18 percent who have no opinion.

Irish Taoisach Brian Cowen said his government is consulting with EU council legal services on drafting possible "opt-outs" to the Lisbon treaty, speaking after an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday (17 October).

"We are prepared to go into that process in good faith," he said, the Irish Times reports, with the structure of the European Commission, EU military integration, taxation and civil rights the likely areas of concern.

The Irish leader also underlined his personal support for the Lisbon document and used Iceland's financial meltdown to show the benefits of EU and eurozone membership.

"There is a huge body of opinion - not shared by the Irish people as things stand - that sees the need for stronger institutions, for better decision-making processes, for more effective decision-making to make sure we can deal with challenges that transcend national boundaries," Mr Cowen said.

"I wouldn't like to think what the situation would be if we ended up like them [Iceland] with our own currency," he added. "The access to the resources of the ECB [European Central Bank] far outweighs the resources of the Irish central bank or Iceland's central bank."

If the Lisbon treaty does not come into force in 2009, that will affect the composition of both the European Parliament and the European Commission next year.

Both would have to be conducted under the EU's current set of rules, the Nice treaty, which would mean that there would be 785 instead of 751 seats, as foreseen in the Lisbon treaty, in the parliament.

But it would also reduce the number of commissioners in the next commission - to be nominated by November 2009 - as under Nice, the number should be "less than the number of member states."

Political analysts have underlined that the EU was lucky to have a country as big as France at its helm during the Georgia crisis as this tempered the lack of real EU leadership. 

"The EU was lucky France held the EU Presidency, because Russia agreed to engage with Mr. Sarkozy on the ceasefire. But they may not have engaged with the EU if a smaller country such as the Czech Republic were EU president, especially with its difficult bilateral relationship with Moscow as a result of its decision to host US missile defence," said Antonio Missiroli, the director of the European Policy Centre, quoted in The Irish Times. 

It notes that the 27-nation bloc continues to achieve results and "integrate" using intergovernmental bodies such as the European Defence Agency and through new laws such as those on liberalising the energy market in Europe or the Emissions Trading Scheme.

But the paper suggests that the EU would be "much better off" with the Lisbon Treaty - already ratified by 23 member states - as it would clear up the "dreadful arrangements" for managing EU foreign policy, currently a mishmash of personalities and responsibilities.

Goulard also called on Irish politicians to face up to "their responsibilities" by coming up with solutions to the crisis. "We are again witnessing an amalgam where critics say Brussels irritates, that people do not want Europe, when in fact the people responsible for this slip are rather to be found in the national capitals."

"We had a prime minister who said he had not read the treaty, an Irish European commissioner who said the same," she pointed out.

And if Irish voters were being made to believe that the treaty influences Ireland's sovereignty on abortion, defence or tax policy, it is because Irish politicians failed to explain the text properly, which was considered by voters to be too complex.

"These issues were not considered in the treaty," Goulard points out. "We can therefore measure how much the Irish political class failed in its mission to explain [the treaty]."

My own hunch is that they will try to find a way to enforce the Lisbon treaty without the non-ratifiers. As a first step, they will try to offer the No-sayers a quit-and-rejoin deal. It would be the least divisive option of all, but unfortunately, it may also be one of the least realistic. It would obviously require their consent, which is far from assured. In Ireland’s case it may require a referendum to get out and another one to get back in.

If this is not possible, there are several other options involving varying degrees of involuntary separation. For example, everybody would formally remain inside the EU on the basis of the Nice treaty, but the ratifiers would organise their areas of co-operation outside the EU and its institutions – on foreign policy, immigration, economic governance, maybe even on energy and the environment. They could do so using the provisions of Lisbon treaty or any other rules they choose among themselves.