The legal action was launched by millionaire Stuart Wheeler, 73, who is a major Conservative Party donor (EurActiv 09/06/08). He claimed that he had "a legitimate expectation" that a public vote would be held because former British PM Tony Blair had promised to hold a referendum on the now defunct EU Constitution.
According to Wheeler, the rejected Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty are the same in all but the name and thus the obligation to hold a referendum cannot be avoided.
However, in their written judgment, judges Stephen Richards and Colin Mackay stated: "We are satisfied that the claim lacks substantive merit and should be dismissed."
The decision will come as a relief to EU leaders, who are seeking to ensure that ratification of the Lisbon Treaty proceeds smoothly even after the setback in Ireland on 12 June.
Wheeler's lawyers immediately applied for permission to appeal on the grounds of the "serious and legal constitutional issues" in the case, but they were refused.
British MEP Philip Bushill-Matthews, the Conservative leader in the European Parliament, insisted that "although Stuart Wheeler may have lost the legal case, the moral case for a referendum is still unanswerable". "The judicial defeat of Stuart Wheeler's action to force [UK PM Gordon] Brown to act upon his manifesto promise to call a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty does not end the moral case for the people to have a say on the future of their country," he continued.
Meanwhile, Wheeler and the British Conservatives are not the only ones to claim that the Lisbon Treaty is no different from the abandoned Constitutional Treaty. In a recent interview with the Spanish daily El País, the eurosceptic Czech President Vaclav Klaus also insisted that the Lisbon Treaty should be rejected because it "includes the institutional innovations of the rejected Constitutional Treaty, typical for federal statehood".
The Czech Republic, which takes over the rotating EU Presidency on 1 January 2009, is also awaiting a court decision on whether the EU Treaty complies with the Czech Constitution before it can proceed with ratification. The decision is expected in September or October, ahead of a major EU summit during which leaders are due to decide on the way forward following Ireland's 'no' vote.
