Cowen says Ireland proud of role as EU model state

Responding to Mr Fischer, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said he had come to know his German colleague well at EU meetings as a provocative and stimulating thinker.

Ireland had especially benefited from the planning dimension of EU membership, which bolstered social partnership. No apology should be made for demanding and getting structural funding to compensate for the centrifugal effects of the single market and the introduction of the euro.

This was not a matter of the hand-out - the begging bowl mentality - but rather of a "hands-on attitude which was successfully validated in Ireland's catch-up development over the last decade and the creation of domestic structures to implement them".

The EU candidate states looked to Ireland as a model of such development, and in Ireland "we should take a great sense of pride in that". The forthcoming referendum on the Treaty of Nice provided "a unique opportunity for Ireland's mainstream opinion to respond dutifully and enthusiastically to the historical and moral imperative of enlargement with a positive message from Irish voters inviting the accession states to rejoin Europe". The referendum was not only about opening new markets, but sending a message that Ireland's "pro-European stance remains as strong as ever".

Mr Cowen emphasised that the debate on the post-Nice agenda should concern the balance between the interests of the nation-states and of Europe. The options were not polarised between pan-nationalism and a superstate. There was a pressing need for a structured debate on the forthcoming Governmental Conference in 2004. The convention system used to negotiate the text of the Charter of Fundamental Rights attached to the Nice Treaty was not necessarily a model. He was more interested in Ruairi Quinn's constructive proposal that a body similar to the Forum on Peace and Reconciliation on Northern Ireland should be set up to handle the debate in this State.

It was as much about the shape of Europe as of Ireland's domestic role in European integration. Ireland was determined to be an active and influential player in the European debate, not inhibited by any idea that "we know our place or that there is some general idea of European integration to which we should adhere".