The constitution was one of the crowning achievements of the successful Irish presidency of the EU. Denis Staunton in Brussels looks back over the past six months
It was like New Year's Eve in Brussels last Wednesday night for the 140 officials at Ireland's Permanent Representation to the EU as they counted down to midnight and the end of the Irish presidency. After the hour struck, they drank and danced into the small hours, sharing a sense of relief and satisfaction at the end of a job well done.
Earlier in the day Ireland's Permanent Representative, Ms Anne Andersen, received bouquets of flowers and enthusiastic tributes from her fellow EU ambassadors. The praise lavished on Irish officials at every level in Brussels this week reached a point where some officials found it all a little embarrassing.
The mood was very different six months ago when Ireland took charge of the EU following December's failed attempt under the Italian presidency to find agreement on the constitutional treaty. The Irish presidency programme appeared modest and even a little dull, focusing on the completion of work under way rather than on the introduction of major new initiatives.
This modesty owed less to any lack of Irish ambition than to the fact that the European Parliament would only sit for three of the presidency's six months, 10 new member-states would join on May 1st and Mr Romano Prodi's Commission was already entering a lame-duck phase.
Ireland's image in Europe had endured a battering due to the initial rejection of the Nice Treaty and a dispute over the 2001 budget. The Taoiseach acknowledged on the eve of the presidency that there was a perception in Europe that Ireland was closer to the fringe than to the core of the European project.
As EU leaders left Brussels after December's summit, many suggested that Europe needed time to reflect on its next move and that negotiations on the constitution should not begin again until late 2004 or even 2005.
They argued that the prospect of European elections, of a general election in Spain and chronic political uncertainty in Poland meant that compromise would be even more difficult to achieve under an Irish presidency than under Italy's leadership.
The Taoiseach took a different view, calculating that any delay in resuming talks would encourage a hardening of positions and that the constitutional negotiations risked becoming entangled with debates later this year on Turkish accession to the EU and the Union's next multiannual budget plan.
"I'm working from the premise - and I think this is a fairly safe one - that the constitution will be agreed some time. It makes a lot of sense to do it in the shorter term. The resolution of these difficulties has to be found," he said in the early weeks of the Presidency.
On the flight back to Dublin after December's summit, Mr Ahern told senior officials that he wanted to "have a go" at resolving the impasse. He approached the task with characteristic caution, however, promising only that the presidency would consult national governments during its first three months, analyse the state of negotiations and report to a summit in March on the prospects for finding an agreement.
The first three months of the year were exceptionally busy as the presidency sought to push as much legislation as possible through the European Parliament before MEPs left in April to start campaigning for the elections. With the help of the parliament's president, Mr Pat Cox, the presidency concluded 80 pieces of legislation with the parliament, one-fifth of the entire legislative burden adopted during the parliament's five-year term.
While ministers and officials worked at securing agreement and preparing legislation on measures affecting everything from the EU's internal market to an EU military mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Taoiseach travelled throughout the Union to test the waters on the constitution.
December's summit collapsed for a number of reasons, chief among them a lack of the necessary political will to make painful compromises in order to reach a deal. Some governments appeared almost relieved at the failure to reach agreement on a treaty that involves such a far-reaching reform of the EU that it will undoubtedly face formidable opposition in many member-states.
The most difficult substantive issue concerned the introduction of a new voting system in the Council of Ministers, where national governments meet. Most countries favoured the introduction of a new "double majority" system based on population size, but Spain and Poland insisted that the system of weighted votes agreed at Nice, which gives them a disproportionate level of influence, should be retained.
By late January Mr Ahern was signalling that any resolution of the dispute would have to be based on the double-majority system, a key demand of Germany, the EU's most populous state.
"If people just stick totally with Nice and don't move at all, you can't do that because it's not going to be satisfactory to Germany. There's a fair amount of sympathy for the German position because they are a large country, they are a big part of the paymaster. They have strength in their argument. While people accept the other arguments, they do think that compromise needs to be made. We need to look very helpfully at the German position," he said.
Irish officials believed that, if Spain dropped its objection to the double majority, Poland would follow suit and they identified signs of a willingness to compromise on the part of Spain's conservative prime minister, Mr José Maria Aznar. Mr Aznar's capacity for compromise was never tested because his party lost office in the election that followed the March 11th terrorist attacks in Madrid.
The Irish presidency's response to the Madrid attacks was less than sure-footed, and there was some surprise in Brussels that neither the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste nor the Minister for Foreign Affairs visited the city on the day after the attacks.
While the Department of Justice dithered over whether to call an emergency meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers, the EU's bigger member-states appeared to seize the initiative in developing a European political response to the attacks.
The Spanish elections saw Mr Aznar's conservatives replaced by a Socialist government committed to restoring Madrid's previously close ties to Paris and Berlin. The new government immediately abandoned Spanish opposition to the double-majority voting system, opening the way for a resolution of the issue.
At a summit in March, EU leaders agreed to seek a deal by the end of the Irish presidency, signalling that they had been won over to the Taoiseach's argument in favour of an early deal.
Although the voting issue was at the heart of the most profound dispute over the constitution, numerous other issues remained unresolved, including the question of abolishing national vetoes in some policy areas.
Britain and a number of other countries were determined to retain the veto on all tax, social security and foreign policy issues. More integrationist countries such as France and Germany argued that the veto is a recipe for stagnation in a Union of 25.
During the Taoiseach's tour of capitals in May, he discussed the constitution but also took soundings from other leaders on their preferred candidate to succeed Mr Romano Prodi as president of the European Commission.
France and Germany backed Belgium's Prime Minister, Mr Guy Verhofstadt, but Britain made it clear that the Belgian's integrationist views and strident opposition to the Iraq war made him unacceptable.
During the tour the Taoiseach floated other names, including that of the former attorney general and EU commissioner, Mr Peter Sutherland. Mr Sutherland's reputation as an outstanding commissioner remains high, and he emerged as a strong potential compromise candidate.
Mr Ahern appears to have been less enthusiastic in promoting Mr Cox as a candidate, and some leaders expressed surprise afterwards that theTaoiseach did not mention Mr Cox's name during the early discussions.
As last month's summit began with no sign of agreement on the Commission president, Mr Ahern made it clear that his priority was finding agreement on the constitution. His successful handling of the constitutional negotiations won universal praise from other leaders, who were impressed by his patient, courteous but determined approach.
The meeting ended, however, without agreement on Mr Prodi's successor, and the final days of the presidency saw a hectic search for a compromise candidate. The choice of Portugal's Mr José Manuel Barroso drew little enthusiasm at first and prompted accusations that the EU had settled for the "lowest common denominator".
A confident performance during his first meeting with the press last Tuesday eased many anxieties about Mr Barroso, who emerged as charming, politically astute and eloquent in four languages.
With only a day to go, Ireland's presidency had completed its task to the satisfaction of almost everyone, crowning the achievements of Ireland's most successful - and almost certainly its last - six-month stewardship of the Union.
Presidency achievements
1. Agreement on a constitutional treaty for the EU.
2. Nomination of José Manuel Barroso as the next President of the European Commission.
3. 80 legislative proposals concluded with the European Parliament, representing 20 per cent of all legislation adopted during the Parliament's five-year term.
4. Agreements on financial services, intellectual property rights, consumer protection laws and unfair commercial practices.
5. Introduction of a European Health Card to facilitate EU citizens' access to health care in any member-state.
6. Agreement on common rules on which persons qualify for political asylum and on procedures for processing asylum applications.
7. Declaration on combating terrorism with an action plan for EU-wide measures to be adopted.
8. Preparation of EU peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina and new targets for development of military capabilities