http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7453560.stm

Awesome stuff. Basically the people of Ireland voted against a EU treaty that would have ruined many freedoms for a lot of people living within the countries joined by the EU. Many people in several countries were not even allowed to vote, the process taken to ratification by reigning government officials, a complete reversal of their nations otherwise democratic state. Ireland came through, however, and threw this unethical treaty in the EU's face.

Good stuff! Go Ireland!

 Ireland 1, EU 0

I can't even count how many Europeans complain about the USA government, this is pretty novel.

Congratz to Ireland.

Why would this treaty be unethical?

 My questions exactly. I thought the EU was a pretty decent setup. What are the freedoms lost?

If i had to guess...

I'd guess it has to do with the Commision of Europeon Communities being reduced in size so that no longer would at least one person from each country be elected to it.

So... for like 5 years out of every 15 you wouldn't have a say in that particular commision.

Either that or it's the fact that Ireland was the only country actually allowed a referendum on it.

I also believe it would allow the EU government a bit more power over the member states governments.

There will also be an EU foreign Minister, which will be pretty crazy.

Basically it's a step closer to the EU being a country instead of a loose alliance of states.

I don't like the tone of the article.

This wouldn't be the end to the EU, they would just have to go back to the drawing board... apperantly their are a lot of Europeans (not just 800k+ Irish) of the 490 million that don't want to take away national vetoes, have a strong executive or a strong foreign ministry.

The BBC seems like it is trying to make it sound like 800k Irish are holding back the great, wonderful EU. 800k had the opportunity, and took, to stand up to non-representitive government. There are hundreds of millions of Europeans who are happy that the Irish did this. It's bad enough when 51% of the people tell the other 49% what to do, it would be worse to have 51% of represented people to tell 100% of unrepresented people what to do.

I don't understand why the so many people are so willing to give up there freedom.

 Basically, for Ireland, this would pretty much silence their own voice on the counsel, not allow them to manage their own nation's finances (taxation rates and whatnot). Ireland has bloomed beautifully over the past decade, due to high increases in IT investment and technology corporation relocation. The Irish corporate taxes are very low, which brings many big companies there (Intel, Cisco, a few others). If the treaty went through, the taxation rate would be set to a rate nearly 4 times as high. This would not only hurt Ireland's job market, but also its investment. The emerald isle went through centuries of bad times, and now its finally getting strong due to its technology sector. 

So, its unethical because it nearly vanquishes the Irish voice in any EU matters, and it takes sovereign power away from the Irish, something the fought for for centuries. 

 No, it doesn't dimish the EU. The treaty gets adjusted until they get what they want, as said before by someone else.  The significane of this matter isn't as much the defeat of the treaty as it is Ireland standing up against being bullied by the rest of Europe.

I was watching Question Time last Thursday, and this (obviously) was one of the main topics of discussion. Although I don't usually side with Conservative, a statement by their representative was a rather good one: (paraphrased): "One of the prerequits of joining the EU is that it is a democracy, I find that funny, because under it's own rules, the EU wouldn't be allowed to join the EU".