Ireland ? It took years to negotiate, weighs in at 260 pages, is virtually unreadable – and now could be a dead letter.

Irish voters vetoed a painstakingly drafted treaty Friday that had been designed to streamline the European Union. Politicians from all of Ireland’s major parties worked hard to sell the complex, deeply technical document to a confused and suspicious public.

Only Ireland put the treaty before the voters at all. The other 26 members are ratifying it through their parliaments, in part fearful of what happened to its predecessor, an even bigger, more ambitious constitution that French and Dutch voters torpedoed in 2005.

To become law, the treaty must be unanimously approved by all 27 EU nations. But Ireland’s constitution requires EU treaties be put to a vote – a risky policy for the EU, whose powerful commissioners are not popularly elected and seem distant from the ordinary European.