Ireland's voters give green light for eastward expansion of EU

DUBLIN, Ireland-- To the relief of Europe's leaders, Irish voters dropped their objection to European Union expansion and gave a resounding "yes" to a plan for nearly doubling EU membership and extending the Union to the borders of Russia, official results showed Sunday.

Final official results, announced Sunday by Irish election officials, showed that 63 percent of the voters approved the expansion proposal during Saturday's referendum -- the country's second on the issue.

Ireland, which rejected the plan in a vote last year, became the last of the 15 EU members to approve a treaty, negotiated in December 2000 in France to admit 12 new members, mostly former communist countries of eastern Europe.

Irish approval was considered the most important legal obstacle standing in the way of the historic expansion -- eagerly awaited by Eastern Europe since the fall of communism more than a decade ago.

"The Irish in their great wisdom have symbolically taken the last brick from the Berlin Wall," said Pat Cox, an Irishman and president of the European Parliament.

EU leaders, who were dismayed by Ireland's shock rejection of the Nice Treaty in June 2001, welcomed the outcome.

"We can proceed with enlargement without any more obstacles," said European Commission President Romano Prodi, who had warned a second Irish rejection would have been a "disaster" for Europe.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the vote marked "a fundamental step for the historic process of Europe's reunification." French President Jacques Chirac said the vote "opens the path to...the unity of our continent."

"The people in Ireland were conscious of their great responsibility toward Europe," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in a statement.

With the Irish now on board, EU leaders are expected during their summit in December in Copenhagen to issue formal invitations to 10 countries -- Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Estonia, Malta and Cyprus -- to join the EU in 2004.

Bulgaria and Romania are expected to enter the Union three years later, assuming they complete economic and political reforms.

Before the Irish vote, EU officials had warned that a second "no" vote would scuttle not only expansion but also EU structural reforms contained in the treaty, negotiated in December 2000 in Nice, France.

"Today is a historic day in our relationship with our sister states of Europe," said Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who campaigned aggressively for ratification.

Critics blamed the June 2001 defeat on a lackluster government campaign and a low, 34.8 percent voter turnout. Turnout in Saturday's vote was about 49 percent, election officials said.

The news from Ireland was warmly welcomed by the leading EU candidates who have grown frustrated by having to wait so long to join the rest of Europe.

"This is a reason for our joy because it shows that no internal problems can overshadow the great idea, which is expansion of the European Union," Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said.

With the institutional framework in place for expanding the EU by 100 million people, pressure now shifts to EU leaders who must resolve differences over farm subsidies and other issues standing in the way of Europe's dream of peaceful union.

In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw cautioned the Irish vote "does not mean that enlargement is now a done deal."

"Important and difficult negotiations lie ahead between now and the Copenhagen European summit in December," Straw said. "But we stand on the edge of a historic moment."

He said the candidate countries were implementing the reforms "that we have asked of them" and "we must not let them down," a reference to disputes within the EU that must be resolved before new members join.

EU leaders meet Thursday and Friday in Brussels to try to resolve a dispute over how much farmers in Eastern Europe will receive in EU subsidies once their countries join.

Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain want the EU to overhaul its system of agriculture spending before the other countries join because they fear that poor eastern European farmers will drain EU finances. Other countries, notably France and Ireland, oppose that.

The EU must also reach an agreement with Moscow over the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Lithuania and Poland but not the rest of Russia.

Once Lithuania and Poland join, the EU wants Russians to obtain visas to travel to and from Kaliningrad, something Russia opposes.

Brigid Laffan, political scientist at University College Dublin, said it was important to maintain the forward momentum and that such problems must be overcome.

"Life is not smooth," she said. "But this enlargement will be the rejoining of the continent in the long term."

She said the former communist countries would face a huge challenges in trying to operate in a competitive international market. Western European countries will face the prospect of an influx of cheap labor from new EU members to the east.

"It will unsettle the system, but it will keep things moving," she added.

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On the Net:

Irish referendum site:http://www.referendum.ie/home/

Irish government: http://www.irlgov.ie/

European Union: http://europa.eu.int/