EU shrugs off Irish vote

Prodi: EU will find a "way forward"

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The rejection of a key treaty on EU expansion by Irish voters will not deter the bloc from pushing ahead with the plan, officials and diplomats said.

But countries aiming to join the 15-member bloc were disappointed with the vote, fearing it would delay their membership.

Almost 529,480 voted to reject the Nice treaty on Thursday, while 453,461 voted to accept it.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told a news conference: "The result is clear, the government is deeply disappointed by the referendum result."

"The result will come as an unexpected shock to our partners and to the applicant countries who are to meet in Gothenburg next week and now face a potential additional obstacle to the timetable for enlargement," he added.

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"I am conscious that the difficulty will not be easy to resolve," he said in Dublin.

"We need to take our time, however, to consider and consult and so the government will not be coming to any hasty conclusions about the next steps."

European Commission president Romano Prodi and Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, in a joint statement, said the EU would work with the Irish government to "find a way forward ... without changing the substance of the Nice treaty."

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"The Commission will pursue the enlargement negotiations with undiminished vigour and determination in line with our firm commitment given to the applicant countries," they said.

Guenter Verheugen, EU commissioner for enlargement, said: "The outcome of a referendum in one country cannot block the EU's most important project."

The former head of the European Commission, Frenchman Jacques Delors, said: "The candidate countries shouldn't be alarmed. The message we must send to them now is that the talks go on and the schedule we set out can still be respected."

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said new solutions could be found by the end of 2002, the self-imposed deadline for the EU to agree on internal reforms to make expansion possible.

"We regret this Irish vote, but that's democracy. We continue to think that we need the Nice Treaty," Vedrine told German television ZDF.

"It doesn't solve all our long-term problems but it does include some very useful improvements."

Italy's caretaker Prime Minister Giuliano Amato said the Irish rejection should not be allowed to slow down EU enlargement.

"The result of the referendum in Ireland confirms just how necessary it is to convince European citizens ever more that there are good reasons (to support enlargement)," he was quoted as saying by the AGI news agency.

"But precisely because these reasons are good, the process of enlargement to candidate nations should not suffer a slowdown and like the other EU members, Italy is ready to help Ireland overcome this setback," he said.

Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus began accession talks in 1998. They were joined last year by Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta.

Officials in Hungary and the Czech Republic said they were disappointed with the vote.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi said a "no" vote would be "pretty bad" and could hurt the mood of entry talks.

He believed that some solution could be still worked out to keep the enlargement process on track.

"I don't think that it has the potential to delay entry, but the atmosphere (of accession talks) would definitely change."

A Czech Foreign Ministry official said that if the Nice Treaty was not approved, "it would be a bad sign for us and for other candidate countries."