LUXEMBOURG (AFP) — EU foreign ministers, sifting through the wreckage of the bloc's Lisbon Treaty, admitted on Monday there were no quick fixes after its rejection by Irish voters plunged the bloc into crisis.
With no easy solution in sight, the ministers agreed to give Dublin time to mull over what to do next after the "No" verdict delivered by a referendum on Thursday.
"No one is rushing to judgment, no one believes ... that somehow there is a quick fix," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told journalists on the sidelines of the meeting in Luxembourg.
The Irish referendum result pushed the European Union into one of its periodic crises over reforming its institutions because the text has to be ratified by all 27 member states.
Although all eyes were fixed on Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin, ministers were careful not to isolate Ireland any more than it already has been.
"There was no sense of any threatening Ireland or any attempt to... marginalise any member state," Martin told journalists.
"There was a sense that Europe has had significant setbacks in the past but working together has had the capacity overcome those setbacks."
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen would attend an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and give European leaders "an assessment of the treaty and its implications," he added.
Few politicians in Luxembourg however are expecting a magic-bullet solution from the Irish leader, who has only been in power a matter of weeks.
"We must first give time to the Irish so they understand the reasons behind this 'no' and so that they can come up with some explanations," said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
Irish voters, the only ones in Europe obliged to hold a referendum, delivered a resounding "no" to the European Union's reform treaty by 53.4 percent to 46.6 percent last Thursday.
The Lisbon treaty, which is supposed to streamline the EU's currently complicated decision-making processes, has already been ratified most EU member states, though they took the parliamentary route. Ireland's constitution required it to submit the proposals to a referendum.
Signed by EU leaders last December in Portugal, the treaty would move the bloc towards more majority voting rather than the difficult-to-achieve unanimity currently required.
It would also introduce a European Council president for a two-and-a-half year term and a new, stronger foreign policy supremo.
Since the Irish referendum results were announced, most EU leaders have insisted that ratification should continue in the eight nations that have not yet endorsed the treaty.
"The process of ratification must continue where it has not yet been completed," Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in Gdansk, northern Poland, in a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel said the treaty was necessary for the EU's future work and expansion, but stressed that any solution would have to be agreed with Ireland and all the signatories.
In Luxembourg, Ireland's Martin said: "We acknowledge their right (to continue ratifying) just as they acknowledged our right to proceed."
In Prague, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for "calm and sang froid" and warned against any temptation for the EU to plunge back "into 10 years of institutional discussions."
Speaking during a joint news conference with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, he added: "Nobody should feel that they are trapped."
The Irish vote was the third referendum blow in three years to EU plans to make its bureaucracy function smoothly.
In 2005 French and Dutch voters rejected the original EU constitution project, a fact which led to the painstaking drawing up of the Lisbon Treaty.
In the absence of an updated rulebook, the bloc could be left limping along with the 2001 Nice Treaty, which the Irish also initially rejected in a referendum before tweaks were made to accommodate them.
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