The European Parliament calls on the eight remaining member states to continue their ratification processes for the Lisbon Treaty after the Irish ‘no’, on 12 June. Meanwhile, the leader of the Socialists was very critical of Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy’s attitude.

The President of the institution, Hans-Gert Pöttering (EPP-ED, Germany), announced at the opening of the plenary session in Strasbourg, on 16 June, that the result of this ballot “confronts the European Union with one of the most difficult challenges in its history”. For him, the Lisbon Treaty allows the EU to move closer to its citizens and its adoption is “an absolute necessity to enable the European Union to defend its values and interests in the 21st century”. He added that the absence of this new treaty would make the membership of other countries “hardly conceivable”. This is also what French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the same day in Prague, while Slovenian Foreign Affairs Minister Dimitrij Rupel and EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn announced the contrary during their meeting in Luxembourg.

Furthermore, Pöttering called for the ratification processes to continue in the other countries (UK, the Czech Republic, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy and Cyprus) and asked the Irish government to submit proposals to “progress together”. The EP’s goal remains to see the text come into force before the European elections, in June 2009.

The leader of the EPP-ED, Joseph Daul (France), believed that it was necessary to continue the ratification very quickly and that there was no need to blame one another. Asked whether, despite criticisms, José Manuel Barroso was still the EPP’s candidate for the Commission presidency in 2009, Daul responded: “He is one candidate among others”.

ATTACK AGAINST MCCREEVY

For his part, the President of the Socialist group, Martin Schulz (Germany), said that he was “particularly disappointed” with the attitude of Irish Commissioner Charlie McCreevy before the referendum. “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 goes home and says he hasn’t read the treaty and doesn’t understand it”. The MEP also criticised the commissioner for participating in a series of conferences (and horse races) in the USA four days before the vote. Though he considers it “unfair” to blame the president of the Commission for this result, Schulz criticised the College for making proposals on rising oil prices the day after the referendum and not before.

Finally, the leader of the Liberals, the Briton Graham Watson, reiterated that “we have to pay special attention to the treaty, but we must not forget other important problems like the price of oil”.