It is no mystery that the structure of the European Union–with its largely unelected officials handing down sweeping regulations and laws to the member states through a complicated bureaucratic and political process that few in Europe fully understand–suffers from a certain democratic deficiency. When it tried to adopt a European constitution that would revolutionize the works and powers of its institutions, the document was undermined by two referendums, in France and the Netherlands, where the public voted overwhelmingly against.

The cumbersome 485-page constitution was then restyled into a lighter version–the Lisbon Treaty–which came in at a comparatively short 300 pages. The beauty of this cosmetic exercise was, the thinking ran, that a treaty can be passed by parliaments, which are considerable more enthusiastic about the EU’s expanding powers than the ordinary citizens whose approval is required to ratify a Europe-wide constitution.

The problem (how did the EU policy honchos fail to foresee this?) with this plan is that Ireland–alone among 27 members–requires just such a popular referendum for any treaty to be approved. That referendum is today. And though Ireland, with its 4.2 million citizens, accounts for one percent of Europe’s population, an Irish ‘No’ could effectively kill the Lisbon treaty.

We will know which way it goes as the referendum results come in tonight. But, as the International Herald Tribune noted,

[w]ith 287 pages of vintage bureaucratese, the Lisbon treaty, which would, among other things, give the European Union its first full-time president and a powerful foreign policy chief, is hard to explain. Few voters fully understand the treaty or even want to try.

We the people? Hardly.