(PARIS) - Ireland's Europe minister on Thursday rejected Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker's statement that the EU's key Lisbon treaty will probably not be in force as planned next year.

"Mr. Juncker gave his personal view. He was speculating," Minister for European Affairs Dick Roche told AFP on the sidelines of an EU-Asia summit in Paris. "The last thing we should be doing is speculating about a timetable."

Juncker on Wednesday became the first European leader to admit that the treaty, aimed at streamlining the enlarged EU, would probably not be in force as planned next year and might even be delayed until 2010.

Ireland sent shockwaves through Europe in June when voters rejected the treaty in a a referendum. It was the only country in the 27-nation European Union to hold such a vote but all nations must ratify the text before it can come into force.

Apart from Ireland, only Sweden and the Czech Republic have yet to ratify the text, and will do so via the parliamentary route.

The crisis, which recalls the rejection of a full-scale constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005, ruined the original plan to get the treaty up and running by January 1, 2009.

The Lisbon Treaty, drawn up to replace a failed constitution, would introduce an EU president and new foreign policy supremo and cut the number of national vetoes in EU voting.

These and the other treaty measures are designed to streamline the creaking institutions of the European Union, which is currently operating under rules designed before the "big-bang" of 2004 which brought 10 mainly ex-Communist nations into the fold.

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