There is an optimistic mood among EU diplomats, writes Denis Staunton, in Naples.
Italy's Foreign Minister, Mr Franco Frattini, looked uncommonly pleased with himself on Saturday afternoon as he ended a two-day conclave in Naples six hours ahead of schedule.
Mr Frattini declared that although many issues remained to be resolved, the ministers had made more progress than expected in negotiating a constitutional treaty for the EU.
The mood among EU diplomats has shifted this weekend and most now expect a deal to emerge from next week's summit in Brussels.
The most compelling evidence of the new optimism is the start of betting on how long the summit will last, with most expecting it to overrun by a day into Sunday, while others predict it will last until Monday.
An Austrian diplomat suggested that, out of 50 unresolved issues, the shape of a compromise is clear on all but 10. The trouble is that those 10 issues are the most important and the most difficult of all. They are also the issues that could cause some countries to veto the new treaty.
Foreign ministers agreed at the weekend to replace the six-month rotating EU presidency with 12-month presidencies run by teams of three member-states.
They have already agreed to appoint a full-time President of the European Council and an EU Foreign Minister who would be a member of both the European Commission and the Council of Ministers.
Britain's Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said on Saturday that, although the EU Foreign Minister would be "double-hatted", he would be answerable to member-state governments.
"You can wear two hats but you cannot serve two masters, as the Good Book explains," he said. The ministers are close to a deal on EU defence that will satisfy those who want NATO to be the foundation of European defence but will not require neutral states to make a mutual defence commitment.
They have agreed to extend qualified majority voting to many new policy areas and to give more influence to the European Parliament.
By abandoning the EU's complicated "three pillar" structure and giving the Union a legal personality, the draft constitutional treaty would make European governance more coherent. Consolidating the EU treaties in a single document is a task that failed diplomats at Amsterdam six years ago but has been achieved by the Convention on the Future of Europe.
The area where least progress was evident in Naples was in the institutional questions concerning the composition of the Commission, the definition of a qualified majority in the Council of Ministers and the number of seats each country should have in the European Parliament.
Most countries want each member-state to retain the right to nominate a member of the Commission, although some, led by France and Germany, believe that a large Commission will be inefficient. A majority favour replacing the complicated system of weighted votes in the Council of Ministers with a double majority, defined as 50 per cent of member-states comprising at least 60 per cent of the EU's population.
Spain and Poland have stated, however, that they will veto the treaty rather than accept the proposal for a double majority. Germany has made clear that the double majority is its absolute priority in the negotiations.
Mr Frattini suggested on Saturday that a decision on changing the voting system could be postponed until 2009, an idea Mr Joschka Fischer dismissed as an admission of failure. Government officials point out that the Laeken declaration which started the process of drawing up a constitutional treaty did not call for any change to the institutional arrangements agreed at Nice.
Since then, however, expectations have changed and failure to agree on institutional reform would represent a defeat for the ambitions of those who sat in the Convention for almost two years.
Failure to reform the institutions would also ensure that, far from being a settlement that will last for 50 years, as Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing suggested, the new treaty will represent no more than the latest stage in the EU's endless process of tinkering with its own inner workings every five years.