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Almost three quarters of Irish voters are opposed to the idea of a second vote on the EU's Lisbon treaty, according to a fresh poll.

The survey, revealed on Sunday (27 July), was commissioned by the London-based eurosceptic think-tank Open Europe, and carried out among 1,000 respondents between 21 and 23 July, shortly after a visit by French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Dublin.

Ratification map

Twenty out of 27 EU states have definitively ratified the EU treaty. Spain, Germany and Poland's parliaments have approved the text but the respective heads of state must still sign off on the document, with the German constitutional court still considering a legal challenge.

The Italian lower house is expected to back the text this week. Swedish MPs are set to pass the treaty without serious opposition when they begin their autumn session in September. And Czech deputies are planning to hold a vote in autumn, after the verdict of the country's constitutional court on a legal appeal.

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]."

With all eyes on the EU leaders' summit in Brussels on Thursday, Janez Lenarcic, secretary of state for European affairs for Slovenia, currently chairing the 27-strong bloc, told MEPs that the continued ratification of the treaty looks likely to be supported by all participants at the top-level meeting.

"The presidency has held talks with countries which have not yet ratified the treaty, and it is quite encouraging to see that those countries are ready to continue the ratification process," said Mr Lenarcic.

The same approach was advocated by the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who argued that the energy the EU had put in to drawing up its internal reform "cannot go to waste."

The various and often conflicting groups that made up the multi-headed No campaign in Ireland want any European institutional interpretation of why Irish people voted the way they did to take on board their key demands.

The groups, particularly those on the left, are worried that European leaders are already cooking up protocols on "non-institutional issues" that can be bolted on to the treaty to ensure its passage in a possible second referendum.

On the weekend, the European commission organised a 'flash' poll of 2000 Irish voters to find out the reasons behind their vote.

According to the Irish Independent, more than 70 percent of those who voted No did so because they thought the treaty could be renegotiated.

The unreleased survey also found that many people who do not normally vote in elections turned out this time, that people who said they did not understand the treaty tended to vote No; and that increased immigration played a role in the No vote.

We have to ask Mr Barroso what kind of people he has in his commission, particularly if you have someone acting as the deregulation Pope in Europe who then goes home and says he hasn't read the treaty and doesn't understand it," Mr Schultz told reporters on Tuesday (17 June).

He was reacting to several statements of Mr McCreevy, who is in charge of internal market in the 27-member-strong European Commission, ahead of the only popular vote on the new EU reform treaty in Ireland held last week, in which the Irish rejected the document.

The commissioner admitted a lack of knowledge of details of the treaty in an interview with the EUobserver, saying he had only read most of a summary of the document.

A total of 53.4% of Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty, with just 46.6% voting in its favour. Turnout was not as low as initially predicted with 53.1% of the electorate turning up at the urns. 

With a total of 862,415 votes against, the Lisbon Treaty, which would have affected all the EU's 495 million citizens, was effectively rejected by 0.175% of the bloc's population, throwing the EU into an existential crisis. 

Scrambling for a solution

The next few days are likely to everyone "scrambling" for a legal solution to the quandary, an EU diplomat told EUobserver adding that there is no answer stored away in a "vault" somewhere.

Germany's foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said "[The question is whether] Ireland for a certain time can clear the way for an integration of the remaining 26 [member states]."

But all countries need to ratify the Lisbon Treaty for it to come into force. UK liberal MEP Andrew Duff and constitutional affairs expert said attempts to find some sort of legal half-way house are "nonsense."

One of the biggest losers in the wake of the Irish referendum will be the EU's enlargement plans, insofar as they have existed. Pierre Moscovici, one of the leaders of the French opposition Socialist Party and a former Europe Minister, made that point in Paris on June 9.

"I think that globally, an Irish 'no' would mean that the European Union would no longer be in a position to pursue further its policy of enlargement," Moscovici said. "For institutional reasons in the first place, because the Treaty of Nice -- I know this, because I was one its negotiators -- is designed for up to 28 [member states]. After that, we'll be in 'no man's land.'"

Of the current candidates, only Croatia would be guaranteed entry under existing rules.

The European Commission has called for ratification of the Lisbon treaty to continue, despite the No result in Ireland's referendum.

"This vote should not be seen as a vote against the EU… [It] has not solved the problems which the Lisbon Treaty is designed to solve," commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said in Brussels on Friday (13 June).

In a joint statement later on, France and Germany also called for the ratification of the Lisbon treaty to continue.

"The ratification procedure has already been achieved in 18 countries. Therefore we hope that the other member states will continue the process," the Franco-German declaration reads.

Britain has already said it would press ahead with the ratification, according to the BBC.

In a resounding defeat for the treaty, only ten out of 43 Irish constituencies voted in favour of the Lisbon Treaty.

A majority of Irish people - 53.4 percent - voted against the EU's Lisbon treaty in Thursday's referendum, while 46.6 percent voted in favour, according to final results released Friday (13 June). Participation was at 53.13 percent.

Labour: 'Lisbon is dead'

His Yes coalition ally, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, however disagreed with Mr Cowen that it should be "full-steam ahead".

"The Lisbon Treaty is dead," he said in a separate RTE interview. "Ireland cannot ratify it – therefore Lisbon falls."

"This has to be recognised by everybody – by the Taoiseach [the Irish prime minister], by other member states."

"This proposal is now gone."

Other Irish politicians were scornful of the idea of continued ratification. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso earlier in the afternoon had said the remaining ratifications "should continue to take their course."

The French Senate's foreign affairs and defence committee on Wednesday (11 June) moved to scrap a clause introduced by parliamentarians in May that would have made it compulsory to hold a referendum on EU membership of large countries, in particular Turkey.

The committee said that the provision introduced by the National Assembly as an amendment to a constitutional reform package "could appear to be directed against a friendly state and ally of France, that is Turkey," and is "likely to cause grave harm to diplomatic relations between France and this country."

On 1 July 2008, France takes over the EU's six-month rotating presidency from Slovenia with an exceptionally busy agenda.

According to a French diplomat in Brussels, "this presidency is the heaviest one of all the history of the European Union in terms of workload".

Irish referendum on everyone's minds

The outcome of the Irish referendum on 12 June will undoubtedly have a considerable impact on the Presidency's schedule. 

Preparing for the EU diplomatic service

And provided all goes well and Ireland ratifies, there will still be a lot to do as the pressure then will fall on preparations for the Treaty's new provisions, which enter into force on 1 January 2009.

According to Kouchner, the French Presidency's work there will centre on designating the future permanent president of the Council and the new foreign policy chief, decisions which are all expected to be taken by EU heads of state at a summit in December.