With the No vote winning Thursday’s referendum in Ireland (the only country to submit the Lisbon Treaty to a popular referendum) this is the third time a constitutional treaty approved unanimously by the Maltese Parliament has been turned down by one or other EU state.

Will Ireland’s No render the Lisbon Treaty void as the French and Dutch vote buried the European Constitution?

European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, was at pains on Friday night to urge member states to continue ratifying the treaty, which all 27 governments had signed up to in Lisbon. Eighteen member states, including Malta, have already done so through their parliaments, but whether the treaty is alive, dead or on life support is open to debate.

The alternative, as Mr Barroso suggested, is for the remaining states to forge ahead and leave Ireland to work out its own relationship with the Lisbon arrangements. This, too, is fraught with problems, as Ireland has already opted out of large chunks of the treaty, such as defence, justice and home affairs.

It is not clear what more it could derogate from.

It mattered not to the Irish voters that the Lisbon treaty leaves the position on tax harmonisation, neutrality or abortion unchanged.

All that mattered was that those businessmen wary of losing their low corporation tax, or those worried that Ireland was sleepwalking into a superstate with its own army, had a platform wide enough to accommodate ultra-rightwing Catholics, neoliberals, pragmatic Eurosceptics, traditional nationalists and Trotskyites.

It still has to be seen whether Malta will now lose its chance of a sixth seat in the European Parliament as the Lisbon Treaty says.

What matters is that, for the second time, a motion approved unanimously (although without a vote) by the Maltese Parliament has been thrown out by the population of another member state. Calls for a referendum to be held in Malta as well, by this paper and by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s CNI, fell on deaf ears and wide predictions that the Lisbon Treaty, like its predecessor, was a dead duck also fell on deaf ears.