IT may seem, by the end of this evening's EU mini-summit, that romantic Europe's dead and gone and with Jean Monnet in the grave. The budget blood-letting of the next few weeks will reveal once again that national self-interest is very much alive and kicking in this union of ours.
And yet, and yet . . . Lest it be forgotten, the pain that every member-state is likely to put itself through in reaching a compromise at the Berlin summit next month is ultimately not about self-interest, except in the most broadly defined sense, but about the uniting of Europe, east and west.
The stringency is the price we have agreed to pay for EU enlargement.
But, to return to the parochial, as David Andrews put it recently, "We are prepared to take some pain but are unwilling to be crucified". In a nutshell, the challenge faced by Bertie Ahern today is to explain that to an audience of sceptical leaders who have all heard of the Irish economic miracle and none of whom understands, or cares, about the difference between Irish GDP and GNP.
There is no doubt that the hit Ireland will take during the 2000-2006 period of Agenda 2000 is proportionately the hardest in the EU. Whether we will be able to take it is another matter. The likely scenario for Ireland, depicted in the graph on the left, is based on best-guess estimates made by Peter Brennan of the Irish Business Bureau in Brussels.
It takes contributions projections from the Department of Finance (obtained by The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act) and assumes a somewhat rougher application of Commission proposals for farm reform and aid intensity (structural funds per capita).
Unlike the last budget negotiation, it is possible to make this prediction based on the Commission's mathematical formula for aid intensity. This relates each country's EU receipts to how near a region is to 75 per cent of average GDP, and to factors such as local unemployment.
The idea is to get some kind of an "objective" measure which will avoid late-night haggling over national allocations once a global figure is agreed.
The resulting scenario - by no means a worse-case outcome - is thus close to the likely out-turn if the contributions system remains unchanged and Agenda 2000 is implemented more or less in full.
The projection appears to be close to what the Government is assuming. On Monday for the first time the Taoiseach predicted that Ireland would be a net contributor in 2007, a date that accords precisely with this prognosis.
The splitting of the State in two for structural funding may result in some improvement of the final net contribution, estimated variously at between £20 million and £90 million a year. But is it really worth the trouble, while the introduction of the more extreme forms of budget "stabilisation" will push the figures in the opposite direction.
BRITISH estimates of the effect on net contributions of budget cuts (see table on right) show the heavily skewed effect on individual states. While Germany benefits to the tune of £1.3 billion for each £10 billion cut, Ireland loses close to £100 million.
The Germans have not yet said how much of their £9 billion annual net contribution they want back, but it can be seen from this table that, all other factors remaining unchanged, a £3 billion rebate to Bonn would cost Ireland £230 million and probably make Ireland a net contributor by 2005 - a worst-case scenario.
But the problem is not just about numbers on a balance sheet, as the farm talks illustrate. While the member-states more or less agree on the need to contain Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) spending at its £32 billion level in real terms, that is only where the problems begin.
Profoundly different policy approaches then vie for supremacy. There are those who favour radical reform of prices, paid for by partial compensation to farmers. And then there are those who want full compensation for less radical price cuts. The budget outcome may be the same now, but a few years down the road the face of the countryside will be dramatically affected by the choice made.
Nor is the picture a simple rich-poor battle between the north of Europe and the south, with Ireland as an honorary though temporary southerner. The Germans have insisted repeatedly that their target is not really the poorer southerners but the richer countries that are not paying their way because of the vagaries of the contributions system.
Nevertheless, the outcome may very well be the squeezing of the poorer and not-so-poor south, under pressure from Bonn to give up their Cohesion Fund.
Member-states like France also face two ways in the debate, urging cuts in structural funding of over £30 billion on the proposed £190 billion budget, while jealously guarding CAP against reform.
And all have their eyes on the jealously guarded British rebate of £2 billion a year. All that can be predicted with confidence of today's meeting is that little light will emerge and probably much sound and fury. But at last the battle is engaged.
