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EU ministers meet after Irish treaty shock AFP LUXEMBOURG (AFP) - European foreign ministers gather Monday at the start of a crucial week for the EU's reform plans after the project suffered a stunning blow at the hands of Irish voters. The ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, will grill Irish counterpart Micheal Martin to see if his government believes something can be done to convince the people to vote again on their cherished Lisbon Treaty. They will also be looking for fresh assurances from EU heavyweight Britain and the Czech Republic's eurosceptic leaders that they will push on with ratifying the treaty, as 18 nations have already done.
(Article continues below) The results of the talks will top the agenda of a two-day EU summit in Brussels starting Thursday, which is shaping up as a crisis meeting since Irish voters last week rejected the reform treaty by 53.4 percent to 46.6 percent. But the way ahead is far from clear. "A 'no' vote does send us into some uncharted territory and we have to now try and chart that territory and see what way forward we can achieve," Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen told RTE state radio Sunday. That vote was the third referendum blow in three years to EU plans to make its bureaucracy function smoothly with 27 members. It could leave the bloc limping along with the Nice Treaty; the inadequate rule book that was signed in 2001 so that the EU could grow but which contained no deeper reform to streamline the system once it had. As the ministers gather, a series of bilateral meetings will be going on. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country takes up the EU's rotating presidency at an extremely tricky time on July 1, meets Czech leaders Monday.
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