As far as I understand, this will create effectively a United States of Europe? Having a European president and such.

I have no idea how I feel about that. There are both good and bad sides to it.

Well as far as I know I'm OK with most aspects of it except the protection of religious nuts that is set to increase with that treaty.

Now if only they could get France sorted out, things would be just dandy...

So, wait..

If I have this right, the irish are going to become a "state" in a "United states" of europe?
and being as they've got 10x less then most of the rest of Europe, they'd be heavily outweighed in things like elections?

I'm confused about this, explain anyone?

Oh, and *Quality to get the message out there.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Shepppard.

Please guys read the Lisbon Treaty. Ireland has already voted NO, and we have now been told by our would-be Masters in Europe that NO is not good enough, we need to vote AGAIN.

Is this democracy?

If Ireland votes NO again there will be no United States of Europe - this is the point.

This made me do a bit of googling, and I find myself feeling a bit envious of your plight. I wish American politics was as nuanced and diverse as European politics, and generally less backward in terms of rights and discourse.

Maybe it's just the site I was reading, but it seems like most of the objections are coming from the European left, in saying that this strengthened EU will be a bit too much like the US, and will be pro-big business, lax on environmental law, and noncommittal on providing basic human rights like health care and social security.

I don't feel qualified to say how I'd vote since I'm neither Irish nor European, but I guarantee you there would be civil war if the US tried to pass just the Civil Rights portion. If the main concern is that they don't seem to mean it nearly enough, I think you're dealing with a far better set of options than we are.

think this is it:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do?uri=OJ:C:2007:306:SOM:EN:HTML

Taking the vote once more doesn't mean it's the exact same thing all over again. It doesn't automatically mean that your government disregards an outcome that is unfavourable to it.

The way I understand it is that while the governments see a need for this referendum for one reason or another, if one nation turns it down it doesn't pass. Now, if that would be the end of it then nothing would ever pass, because the EU has alot of members who all have different priorities and agendas. No vote would probably ever be ratified by all member nations in its original form; so if the vote is "no", then alterations and additions are made to it to rectify the objections of the nation turning it down, which then can take another vote on the edited version of the referendum.

This could be erroneous of course, but it's how the process has been explained to me. And if it is in fact correct, then I do think it's a very agreeable system for actually getting things done.