Leading article: A knife-edge vote that rings an alarm bell for Europe

Anti-Europeans across Europe, in Britain especially, must be licking their lips.Always on the lookout for some calamity or other to strike and ideally sink the hated Brussels bureaucracy, they may get their wish if Ireland votes against the Lisbon Treaty on Thursday.

It is not impossible. Past experience from the 2001 vote on the Nice Treaty, which the Irish rejected in a referendum, shows Irish voters are not necessarily swayed by threats of pariah status. On the contrary, being browbeaten brings out their fighting spirit. The more the Irish Prime Minister, Brian Cowen, raises the rhetorical bar, the more the polls tilt against a "Yes" vote. The latest shows the two camps almost neck and neck, though a large pool of voters is undecided.

Tempting though it may be for some to stick a large spoke in the wheels of the EU juggernaut, we must hope Mr Cowen can pull off a "Yes" result. After the latest round of enlargement to bring in Bulgaria and Romania, with the prospect of Croatia joining by 2010, and with the more distant prospect of other Balkan states joining later on, it is urgent that the EU be equipped with mechanisms that enable it to function.

If the changes proposed in Lisbon offered efficiency in exchange for less democratic accountability, there would be a case for voting "No", whatever the consequences. But that is not the case. The proposed enhancement of the European Parliament's powers over a host of policy areas will make the EU's workings more democratic, transparent and accountable, not less.

It is true that the changes include streamlining – a word that strikes dread into the hearts of some citizens of small countries such as Ireland, who fear their voice is about to be marginalised in decision-making. But this fear is exaggerated. The future EU, once the other South-East European states join, will overwhelmingly be a club of small nations. It ought not to be difficult for them to stand up for their collective rights against the big few: Germany, France and Britain.

Europe needs greater coherence also to meet the challenges arising beyond the Continent. For all its relative decline vis-a-vis the emerging powers of China and India, Europe is still an economic giant. At the same time, it is a political dwarf, unable to make its voice heard effectively over Iran, Israel-Palestine, or much else. If Lisbon gives Europe a clearer voice in world affairs, that is a good thing; especially at a time when a new President is about to occupy the White House.

The opponents of Lisbon in Ireland, meanwhile, have no common cause. This is a muddled alliance of Sinn Fein nationalists, people obsessed with supposed threats to Ireland's traditional neutrality, anti-abortionists, anti-globalisation fanatics and farmers who couldn't care less about Lisbon but use it as a stick with which to beat the government. It is not coalition that inspires much confidence.

Nevertheless, if Ireland does give Lisbon a green light, allowing the reforms to take effect next year, lessons need to be learned. It is a measure of popular disillusion with Europe that the "No" camp has done as well as it has, in a country as instinctively pro-European as Ireland. It is lucky for Lisbon that no other country is holding a referendum, because elsewhere the results for the "Yes" camp might well be worse.

Brussels needs to take seriously the combination of resentment and indifference it evokes among growing numbers of people, and redress this by articulating a clearer, more inspiring vision of what Europe means. A "No' vote in Ireland would be a serious setback. But a "Yes" vote should not be interpreted complacently as a sign that all is well with the European project.

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