EUROPEAN DIARY:Statement after statement castigated the ungrateful Irish for torpedoing the treaty, writes Jamie Smyth.
AS THE results tumbled in on Friday with constituency after constituency in Ireland voting to reject the Lisbon Treaty, the mood of fear that dominated the EU quarter in Brussels for much of last week quickly turned into a mixture of depression, anger and dread.
Diplomats, who had spent seven years drafting the ill-fated EU constitution and then the Lisbon Treaty, began to talk of feeling sick at the notion of devoting more of their life to revising European treaties.
Many of my European press colleagues also began to complain bitterly at the prospect of more mind-numbing years reporting on the EU's institutional make-up rather than what a new EU council president would be doing.
An Italian journalist, who has worked in Brussels for more than a decade, asked how we could have thumbed our noses at the Union after all the cash handouts? Irish officials in Brussels immediately went to ground. One senior official I spoke too said she was too depressed to talk. When I finally caught up with another Irish EU official, who had travelled back to Ireland to vote, he entered into a 20 minute tirade against the Government, the farmers, the Opposition, the No campaign and the Irish.
"We're going to be forced out," he literally shouted down the phone in exasperation.
Politicians in Paris, Berlin and Madrid quickly confirmed his worst fears as statement after statement castigated the ungrateful Irish for torpedoing the treaty. Even the staunchly pro-European Spanish public aimed a kick at the mongrel Irish telling a radio journalist that we should repay some of the €55 billion from Brussels.
Back in Brussels, commission president José Manuel Barroso pointedly refused to wait for Taoiseach Brian Cowen to announce the result. He grabbed the initiative in a packed Berlaymont press room by declaring that Cowen had told him a few minutes earlier that the treaty still lived. He repeated the agreed line from Paris and Berlin: ratification should continue and Cowen should find an Irish solution to an Irish problem.
Asked why Irish voters mattered less than French voters (ratification of the EU constitution halted a few weeks after the French voted No?) he mumbled something about how the commission respected the dignity of all EU states, big or small. No one believed him. He is up for reappointment next year and German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy need to be kept sweet until then.
After the press conference, as one of the few Irish reporters in Brussels, I was in demand. The BBC had a broadcasting unit erected outside Kitty O'Shea's pub opposite the Berlaymont where I was interviewed on the consequences of the vote for Ireland in Europe. The eurosceptic UK Independence Party had taken over the pub for the day and were toasting the Irish for not ratifying the treaty. After a few rousing cheers from UKIP live on air and a few pats on the back from my new British friends, it was back to the office to type up a few thousand words on the European reaction to the Irish referendum.
That night I got an invitation from the British press pack to drown my country's sorrows in some Belgian beer. The Brussels' correspondent of the Daily Telegraphproposed yet another toast to the Irish for saving Britain from itself (Gordon Brown has supported the Lisbon Treaty against the wishes of the broadly sceptical British media).
"Ireland won't be excluded from the European Union for voting down the treaty," he said. And if it is then you are always welcome back into the commonwealth, he joked mischievously.
By Sunday as the dust was beginning to settle, Ireland began to receive some diplomatic support. British foreign minister David Miliband said there was no question of "bulldozing or bamboozling" the Irish into a second referendum. The Austrians also leapt to defend Ireland in its hour of need, mindful of when they were made the pariahs of Europe in 2000 for including a far-right party in their government.
Politicians also began to reflect on the wider problem affecting the European project - the glaring disconnect between the EU and its citizens. Even Sarkozy acknowledged on Sunday that there needed to be a change in the way Europe was constructed.
Perhaps the most important message from the Irish referendum is that three years after the EU was delivered a body blow by the public rejection of the EU constitution, nothing much has changed. Despite lots of talk about bringing citizens closer to Europe, Brussels still remains aloof, while national politicians continue to blame the EU for domestic problems and many don't even know the basics of how the EU works.
No Lisbon Treaty or new institution building process can solve this problem.