European Diary/Denis Staunton: The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, arrives in Brussels tomorrow evening for a summit that will be dominated by the EU's response to the bomb attacks in Madrid and the future of Europe's onstitutional treaty.
Mr Ahern and many other leaders will attend a memorial service for the victims in Madrid tomorrow morning and the struggle against terrorism will be the first item on the agenda when the leaders meet on Thursday afternoon.
Irish presidency officials are annoyed by the suggestion that their slow response to the Madrid massacre allowed the EU's biggest states to take the lead. They claim that ministers from the larger member-states sought to grab credit for initiatives already under consideration by the presidency and insist that all 25 member-states are united behind a single strategy to reduce the risk of further attacks.
The leaders will adopt a declaration on terrorism that pledges them to improve security co-operation and to appoint a co-ordinator to streamline EU action against terrorism. The co-ordinator's precise role has yet to be agreed and the leaders are unlikely this week to nominate anyone to take on the job.
Mr Ahern's remarks after his meeting with Mr Jacques Chirac in Paris yesterday appeared to confirm that the Taoiseach will recommend that formal negotiations on the constitutional treaty should be reconvened after Easter. The Irish presidency has already achieved more than most observers expected in persuading all 25 member-states to seek agreement during the first six months of this year.
On the biggest unresolved issue - the voting system in the Council of Ministers - everyone is now agreed that the system of weighted votes agreed at Nice will be replaced by a double majority system based on population size. No new formula has yet been produced to satisfy France, Germany, Spain and Poland - the main protagonists in the dispute - but the four countries' positions are closer now than they were when December's summit collapsed.
Other issues that remain unresolved include a possible mention of God in the preamble, and proposals to abolish the national veto in some policy areas. Presidency officials stress that, although there is a clear willingness to negotiate, a successful conclusion is far from certain.
Formal negotiations are expected to resume late next month, after the new Spanish government takes office. Foreign ministers are likely to meet at least twice before the presidency produces a draft agreement for consideration by EU leaders in a final, treaty-making meeting.
Mr Chirac hinted yesterday that he would prefer to postpone a deal until after the European elections, making the summit on June 17-18 the most likely date for a final deal.
The EU's spring summit is supposed to be dominated by economic affairs, although the agenda is often knocked off course by unexpected events. On Friday, the leaders will seek to breathe new life into the Lisbon agenda, a 10-year programme to make the EU more competitive.
They are expected to nominate a prominent figure from the business world to make an assessment of what has been achieved and how much more needs to be done to reach the goal of making the EU the world's most competitive economy by 2010.
While the leaders are meeting, EU finance ministers will discuss two appointments - the successors to Mr Horst Koehler as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and to Mr Domingo Solans on the executive board of the European Central Bank (ECB).
The Irish vice-president of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Mr Michael Tutty, is among the nominees for the ECB job but Ireland's presidency role could inhibit the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, from promoting an Irish candidate too energetically.