Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the European Commission's Agenda 2000 is the price tag. The most radical extension and internal reform of the Union will apparently be possible without either raising the spending ceiling - 1.27 per cent of Union GDP - or calling into question key aspects of its main programmes.

"What's the price of enlargement? And who will pay it?" a frustrated Danish journalist asked yesterday to little avail.

A combination of predicted growth of 2.5 per cent a year, restrained pruning of structural programmes, stricter enforcement of eligibility criteria and a tighter focus on priority spending will, it appears, make it possible to bring in up to six new member-states.

The figures square because the combined GDP of the 10 applicant central and eastern European countries (CEECs) is the equivalent of only one twentieth of EU GDP - no more than the annual GDP of the Netherlands.

With Union aid capped at 4 per cent of a country's GDP, the next budget round from 2007 is likely to be far more painful than this.

Yet, for Ireland, the cost is likely to be somewhat steeper. The price of our economic success in recent years will certainly be not just gentle pruning of our EU allocations, but the budgetary equivalent of a short back and sides.

When, in years to come, the majority of Europe's citizens look back on yesterday's historic first opening up to the former states of the eastern bloc, will Ireland's remember it only as the turning point in our relationship with Europe? The point when the gravy train stopped? The point when our love affair with the EU went sour?

It is impossible to put a precise figure on Ireland's reduced allocation over the 2000 to 2006 budget period.

What sources close to the Commission make clear, however, is that by the last two years, Ireland's allocation will certainly be based, at best, on the lower funding rates paid to non-Objective One regions. That means an annual allocation of well under half the current level.

In the 1994-1999 period we are getting about £1 billion a year in structural and cohesion funds. Last year this represented around 2 per cent of GDP. Economists have argued that EU spending may contribute to between 0.5 and 1.5 percentage points in our current growth rate.

Yet with growth running at 6 per cent and forecast to continue to do so over the next period, finding alternative sources of funding should not be beyond our means. The phenomenal success of the economy in recent years makes special pleading sound increasingly greedy.

The Commission acknowledges that much important infrastructural work still needs to be done and that our training requirements are still very heavy. It has promised a "soft landing" on grant aid, so that the good work is not undone.

Sources were also suggesting yesterday that flexibility on the reference date for eligibility for Cohesion Funds may allow us to continue to receive that funding for at least half the next budget period.

As for the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, its precise effects on Irish farmers are also unquantifiable.

Although the CAP budget is set to rise by up to £3.5 billion a year, much of this will be taken up by a new dairy cow premium - a transfer of part of the cost of milk from consumers to taxpayers - and the net effect on farm incomes is not clear.

The last round of MacSharry reforms did see farm incomes rise in Ireland beyond the £2 billion mark for the first time in 1995, but they were virtually static last year. The fear is that beef compensation payments, in particular, will not match the actual fall in prices.

Yet while the IFA will certainly complain at the scale of compensation, the logic of the Commission's position is pretty overwhelming.

The Farm Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, is sounding increasingly like a certain baroness: there is no alternative.

Unless action is taken on cereals, for example, intervention stocks could reach a record 58 million tonnes by 2005. And these could never be disposed of on the world market as the WTO - formerly GATT - rules have put a ceiling on subsidised exports.

The only hope for European agriculture is to trade on the expanding world market at unsubsidised prices while ensuring the survival of rural communities by subsidising farmers instead of their production.

The use of "compensation" for loss of price support also reduces the cost of enlargement - you cannot be compensated for what you never had. What the CEECs need is support for restructuring, not for prices.

A refocusing of the aid to help the poorer farmers should, in theory, be beneficial to Irish farmers. They have certainly been saved from a worse fate by the determination of Mr Fischler to fight the return of CAP to national governments.

Not only would this "renationalisation" solution undermine EU financial solidarity to the detriment of the poorer member-states, but by placing the onus on national exchequers to fund farmers it would inevitably have drawn them into conflict with urban communities over scarce resources.

Beyond the specific effects on Ireland, much of the reform of the structural funds and CAP contains important and welcome attempts to shift day-to-day decisions away from Brussels and back to member-states or even local communities.

The simplification of structural funding should also cut the number of EU programmes from 800 to 400. Greater transparency in methods of allocating funding should make for greater fairness in allocations.

But the Union's financial preparedness is not matched by its institutional ability. The failure of the Amsterdam summit to address reform of the unanimity voting system, the size of the Commission, or the weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers reflects an ominous lack of political will.

Perhaps, as the Commission President, Mr Jacques Santer, hinted yesterday, the timing was wrong. With all eyes on the single currency, it was too much to hope the leaders would also agree to major institutional reform.

But if they do not grasp the nettle in 1999, yesterday's great leap forward may yet appear lame.