"Yes. the vote is repeated until the right answer pops up.On three occasions – Denmark on the Maastricht Treaty, Ireland on the Nice Treaty and Ireland again on the Lisbon Treaty – voters have initially rejected an EU treaty only to vote in favour of it in a second referendum."

The way that consensus works is that if agreement cannot be reached - eg by referendum, then the proposal is brought back and the areas if contention are looked at, and allowances are made before bringing it back for agreement. That way a flawed proposal can be improved rather than rejected. Of course, there are some people who think that in the EU all decisions should be only what the UK wants, and they tend to be nasty UKIP and Tory types.