2 June 2005
Britain's referendum on the EU constitution is to be shelved after Dutch voters dealt a devastating blow to the treaty, sources have said.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will announce on Monday that the Bill paving the way for the British vote is to be put on hold indefinitely.
The referendum - planned for early next year - cannot go ahead without the Bill which was unveiled in the Queen's Speech.
Foreign Office sources said Mr Straw would effectively suspend the referendum indefinitely. He is unlikely to put any timescale on events.
The move comes after the Dutch overwhelmingly rejected the constitution with 62% voting "no" and just 38% "yes".
The result was even more emphatic than Sunday's "no" vote in France. With two of the EU's founding members now rejecting the new rulebook, most observers say any hope of implementing it in the near future has now been killed off.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is now holding a round of crisis talks to try to save the constitution.
Even before the Dutch "no" reinforced the scale of the political disaster now facing the European Union, he warned against "unilateral initiatives" by any government leaders which would pre-judge a summit on June 16 to consider the fall-out and where Europe goes from here.
In Britain, Europe Minister Douglas Alexander acknowledged the constitution was in trouble.
"These two 'no' votes leave the constitutional treaty in serious difficulty," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "Certainly, from a British point of view, we are very clear of the need to respect public opinion and respect the results we have seen this week."
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