Lisbon monument to the explorer Vasco da Gama: perils remain on the latest European journey, even without the financial crisis and recession

Rarely has the Guinness flowed so freely at Kitty O’Shea’s, an Irish pub opposite the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, as it did last Saturday afternoon.

That was when the news arrived from Dublin that Irish voters had backed the European Union’s Lisbon treaty in a referendum by 67 to 33 per cent, reversing their rejection of the charter in June 2008 and putting the 27-nation bloc within sight of concluding an often demoralising eight-year quest to redesign its operations.