I was interested to see that the Dutch Council of State, the highest judicial authority in the Netherlands, has ruled that the Reform Treaty is sufficiently different from the draft Constitutional Treaty rejected by the Dutch people in June 2005, and does not amend the existing EU treaties as dramatically, so that it will not be necessary to hold a new referendum.

This ruling from the high judicial authority from a country that actually had a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty should give cause for thought to those loudly proclaiming the need for us to have one here on the grounds that the Reform Treaty is the same as the Constitutional Treaty. Even the Dutch don't think that this is the case.