The Treaty of Lisbon: the next steps

Timothy Garton Ash writes about the next steps after the Irish No to the EU Reform Treaty: "Instead of bullying the Irish, Europe should be working on plan D - and E. ... Plan D is for the rest to go ahead and ratify, starting with Britain in the House of Lords last night, and then for the Irish government to come to the European Council in October with suggestions for a package they might take back to change their voters' minds. ... Plan E has three parts. The first is to continue working under the existing treaties. ... The second part is to see how many of the institutional changes that we really do need - to make an enlarged EU work better, and be more effective in the world - could be implemented without a new grand treaty. ... The third part of plan E is the most important of all. ... We would go on actually doing things that matter to Europeans and to the world. When the new US president is elected this autumn, he should find in his in-tray a memo from Europe spelling out what we see as the biggest challenges in the world and what we propose to do about them."

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