Prodi more hopeful on Nice referendum

European Commission President Romano Prodi said yesterday he had become more optimistic about the chances of the Irish approving the EU's landmark Nice Treaty this autumn in a planned referendum.

The Irish plunged the European Union into confusion after a first referendum last year by rejecting the treaty, which prepares EU institutions for eastern enlargement.

Dublin believes plans enshrined in the Nice Treaty on future military cooperation raised voters' fears over the country's traditional neutrality.

But Ireland's EU partners recently declared its neutrality would not be undermined by new arrangements under the treaty.

"I am more and more optimistic because I think the declaration on neutrality is so strong, so strong, so clear... I think that can change radically the attitude of the Irish people (to Nice)," Prodi told reporters.

Prodi said he hoped voters would have more information this time about the issues at stake in the treaty, adding that the first referendum had failed to provoke wide debate in Ireland.

Opinion polls suggest Irish voters are not opposed to enlargement as such, but fear a gradual loss of identity and influence in an EU widely perceived as distant and bureaucratic.

Ireland is the only one of the 15 EU states which is required by its constitution to endorse any new Union treaty by referendum. The others require only parliamentary ratification.

The Nice Treaty, agreed at an acrimonious summit in the southern French resort in December 2000, must be ratified by all member states before the end of this year.

EU diplomats say a second Irish "No" would badly delay plans to admit up to 10 new countries, mostly from ex-communist eastern Europe, in 2004.