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.
    Reacting with frustration to the vote, other European countries
said they would try to press ahead for a way to make the Lisbon Treaty
work after all and would discuss the matter when their leaders meet in
Brussels next week.
    But if they fail, the union would have to find some other method
of adjusting institutionally to the addition of 12 new members since
2004, a rapid growth raising difficulties the treaty was intended to
address. It will also have to come to terms with the vexing reality
that, as important as the union is to their daily lives, many ordinary
Europeans still feel alienated from it and confused by how it works.
    "Europe as an idea does not provoke passionate support
among ordinary citizens," Denis MacShane, a Labor member of the British
Parliament and a former British minister for Europe, said in an
interview. "They see a bossy Brussels, and when they have the chance of
a referendum in France, the Netherlands or Ireland to give their
government and Europe a kick, they put the boot in," he added,
referring to earlier defeats of similar agreements in similar
referendums.
    The Lisbon Treaty, written after torturous meetings among all
the member states, is dense and complex. But if enacted, it would give
Europe its first full-time president and create a new foreign policy
chief whose responsibilities would include controlling the development
aid that the union distributes.
    The treaty would also reduce the size of the European
Commission, the union's executive body, rotating the seats so that each
member country would have a seat in 10 out of every 15 years. And it
would change the voting procedures on the European Council, made up of
Europe's heads of state and government, so that fewer decisions would
require unanimous votes.
    Pointing to the union's success in providing a democratic and
economic anchor for post-Communist countries after the fall of the
Soviet Union, supporters of the treaty argued that its passage was
essential to making the expanded Europe more efficient and democratic.
    Andrew Duff, a British member of the European Parliament and the
Liberal Democrat spokesman on constitutional issues, said that the
treaty's defeat had been a "tragedy" for the grand project that is the
European Union.
    "The problems the treaty was established to address are still
there: effectiveness, democracy and the capacity to act," he said in an
interview. Referring to the 2001 Nice Treaty, which last reorganized
the way the union functions, he said: "If the outcome of this is that
we are obliged to struggle on with the existing treaty, then the Irish
have done no favors for themselves or us."
    It is unclear what exactly will happen next. Ireland is
the only country to put the Lisbon Treaty to a referendum, as its law
requires. In general, such treaties are far more popular with Europe's
leaders than with its voters, and most governments are reluctant to
risk the uncertainty of a national vote.
    The other 26 countries in the European Union are considering it
through their legislatures and executives, and 18 have approved it so
far.
    Around Europe, pro-treaty officials reacted to the vote with a
collective brave face, vowing to forge ahead with the Lisbon Treaty
despite Friday's possibly fatal setback.
    In 2001, Ireland initially rejected the Nice Treaty in a similar
referendum to the one on Friday, but was prevailed upon to change its
mind in a second referendum the next year.
    There is no suggestion yet that that might happen again. But in
Brussels, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel
Barroso, said he believed that the treaty was still "alive." In Paris,
Jean-Pierre Jouyet, France's minister for European affairs, said that
"the most important thing is that the ratification process must
continue in the other countries, and then we shall see with the Irish
what type of legal arrangement could be found."
    Mr. Jouyet told LCI television that Europe could not eject
Ireland from the Union, but added, rather ominously, "But we can find
specific means of cooperation."
    In Britain, government officials said that they would continue
the process of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, which is currently wending
its way through Parliament. But there are deep strains of anti-European
sentiment there, and the treaty's defeat in Ireland lends new momentum
to the campaign against it.
    "This is a resounding victory on behalf of ordinary people
across Europe over an out-of-touch and arrogant political elite," said
Neil O'Brien, the director of Open Europe, a British group that opposes
the treaty and argues, with some justification, that it is merely a
slightly altered version of the failed 2005 European Union constitution.
    And Britain's opposition Conservative Party said that it would
be the "height of arrogance" and an insult to public opinion for the
government to forge ahead with the treaty now.
    "People in Ireland have sent the clearest possible
message that they do not want this treaty, they do not want this
constitution, and by all rights now it should be declared dead," said
David Cameron, the Conservative leader. "I think the elites in Brussels
have got to listen to people in Europe who do not want endless powers
being passed from nation-states to Brussels."
    In Ireland, the failure of the referendum was a crushing blow to
the pro-treaty Irish establishment, including the major political
parties and most business groups, which had worked hard for a yes vote.
But the campaigners against the treaty mobilized under the efficient
leadership of Declan Ganley, a businessman who argued that the treaty
took power away from Ireland.
    Mr. Ganley, who formed a group, Libertas, to campaign against
the treaty, said that voters' rejection of it would force the Irish
prime minister, Brian Cowen, to renegotiate its terms and secure a
"better deal."
    "We want a Europe that is more democratic, and if there is to be
a president and a foreign affairs minister, they should be elected," he
said in an interview.
    Ireland has been one of Europe's success stories, transforming
itself with the help of billions of dollars from the European Union
that began pouring in during the late 1980s. But it now finds itself in
the less happy position of having to help finance the newer, and
poorer, countries who have recently joined the union.
    "There was no money for Ireland in voting 'yes,' " said Michael
Marsh, a professor of comparative political behavior at Trinity College
in Dublin.
    Experts on Ireland's relationship with Europe said that the
country was not anti-Europe, just against European institutions it
found to be shadowy and remote.
    Opponents of the treaty, then, were able to capitalize on
voters' confusion about the treaty and feelings of alienation from the
political entity of Europe - which is the source of some 85 percent of
the new laws passed in Europe every year, said Michael Bruter, a senior
lecturer in political science at the London School of Economics.
    "It's a pro-European country, but they didn't understand the
treaty - why it was needed, what it was going to change," Mr. Bruter
said in an interview, speaking of the Irish voters. "They just don't
want to give Europe a blank check anymore."
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    Sarah Lyall reported from London, and Stephen Castle from
Brussels. Reporting was contributed by Eamon Quinn from Dublin, Graham
Bowley from New York, and Steven Erlanger and Alan Cowell from Paris.