Brussels - A senior Irish European Union official, Mr David O'Sullivan, has sharply criticised France's handling of last weekend's EU summit in Nice in an internal memo.
EU leaders agreed to a package of reforms aimed at preparing the bloc for eastern enlargement after five days of tough negotiations which ended at dawn on Monday. Critics have branded the reforms as weak and half-hearted.
In a surprisingly frank memo distributed to some 20,000 EU officials, Mr O'Sullivan, secretary-general of the European Commission, identified Spain and Britain as the main winners of the summit chaired by French President Jacques Chirac.
"The French presidency had obvious difficulties in identifying the right balance," he said, adding that domestic politics and a funding scandal involving President Chirac's conservative RPR party had made the President's task much harder.