Word: voting
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...Lisbon Treaty is designed to streamline E.U. decision-making now that the club has expanded to 27 members, but the Irish referendum - the only such vote in the E.U. - has thrown the entire project in disarray...
...Sarkozy and other E.U. leaders are now pinning hopes of salvaging the Treaty on another referendum, perhaps in a year's time. Officially, the bruised Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen was treated with sympathy at the Brussels summit, and there was universal recognition that the Irish vote had to be "respected". But behind the scenes, Cowen - tellingly banished to the far end of the family photograph of E.U. leaders - was alternately cajoled and bullied to run another vote...
...there is no guarantee a second vote would win. The referendum got nixed thanks to a bewildering array of mostly unrelated objections, including abortion, neutrality, tax sovereignty, economic prospects, the loss of an Irish E.U. commissioner and the deregulation of the taxi trade. Indeed, an E.U. survey of 2,000 Irish "no" voters said the main reason they rejected the Treaty was that they did not understand...
...None of this makes Cowen's task any easier. He will now report back to the leaders at their October summit with either a road map charting a way out of the mess or a confirmation that another vote is pointless and the treaty must be declared dead...
...leaders, they are still capable of dealing with real-life issues, as they showed in Brussels after their recriminations over the Irish vote. They announced a relief package for farmers, fishermen and others affected by soaring oil and food prices; they agreed to scrap diplomatic sanctions against Cuba imposed in 2003; and they implicitly threatened more sanctions against Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's regime...