THE WEEKEND EU gathering decided in principle to appoint a special EU envoy to work with all the parties to the Middle East peace process.
This decision was taken "in light of the fact that the Union is already contributing economic aid of a significant kind" to Middle East programmes, the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, said after the European Council meeting.
No person had been named for this envoy position, and its precise role had yet to be worked out.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Spring, would travel to the Middle East as President of the European Council of foreign ministers. He would convey "the strongly held views" of the EU member states that the peace process must be accelerated and confrontations avoided, Mr Bruton said.
He also told the final press conference that the Irish EU Presidency will produce a draft new European treaty by December as planned.
The weekend meeting of European political leaders also put "a very strong emphasis on the need to tackle crime", Mr Bruton said.
Despite weekend reports that the ambitions for radical EU reform would be sealed down in Dublin, Mr Bruton said the summit had confirmed "that we will be pursuing an ambitious objective in terms of the content of the treaty.
"We will not simply be making small changes, we will be ensuring that the changes we make are adequate to provide the basis or an enlarged European Union."
Without a successful conclusion to the IGC, negotiations with applicant member states would have to be postponed, he warned.
As well as confirming that a draft treaty would be ready in December, all member states had agreed to keep the deadline of next June for final agreement on a new treaty, the Taoiseach said. The summit gave "a very strong, unanimous impulse to the InterGovernmental Conference", which is negotiating the treaty changes.
Asked about strange differences between member states on EU reform proposals, he said these were "differences of the approach to a common objective, rather than differences as to the objective we were seeking".
He suggested there could be a change in the emphasis of the work at the IGC to strengthen the anti crime provisions of a new EU treaty.
In the "pillar" of the Union dealing with justice and home affairs, the EU was dealing with issues such as the movement by criminals of money from one state to another, drugs, crimes against children and "cyber crime", the use of modern information technology to promote crime.