If the foreign ministers of Europe did not exercise their minds on the reform challenges of Europe, they would leave the field to has-been politicians, Jaime Gama warned his colleagues as he summed up their discussion.
The Portuguese Foreign Minister, exercising his prerogative in the presidency, had brought us for the foreign ministers' informal meeting to his home patch, the island of Sao Miguel in the Azores.
It felt like home. The island is known for its many shades of green, and the pattern of fields and hedges and familiar Friesians all suggested Wicklow, were it not for the shocking pink of the ubiquitous hortensias and the discovery of Europe's only tea plantation.
The idea of these informals had originally been as get-to-know-you, brain-storming sessions, but the EU's hectic agenda has gradually encroached. Mr Gama wanted to encourage them to take the long view again with a wide-ranging debate on the future of Europe; spurred on, no doubt, by the irritation of seeing old warhorses like France's Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Germany's Helmut Schmidt taking on the mantle of champion of the integration process.
The two have circulated a joint article arguing that the EU's founding six should negotiate a "treaty within the treaty" to allow them to integrate faster than the less enthusiastic latecomers. They believe enlargement will slow down and even stall the process, with new member-states lacking both the political will and the administrative, economic capacity to go further.
The former Commission president, Jacques Delors, has spoken in a similar vein of the need to create an "advance guard" to take the place of the stalled engine of integration, the Franco-German alliance.
He believes this is the only way to consolidate and extend the sort of political and economic co-ordination which is proving fruitful in the context of monetary union and increasingly in the spheres of security and justice and home affairs.
Such ideas were reflected over the weekend here in renewed talk of including a loosening up of the EU's flexibility provisions by including them in the remit of the Inter-Governmental Conference.
The constitutional innovation of the Amsterdam Treaty, the provisions for flexibility, better known as reinforced co-operation, set a framework for groups of member-states to engage in specific joint projects within the confines of the EU, such as the single currency or Schengen, without implicating or drawing in all the member-states. The Amsterdam provisions have yet, however, to be used.
Wary precisely of creating the potential for a two-speed Europe with inner and outer cores of membership, countries like Ireland and Britain fought to ensure that if such treaty mechanisms were used they could only be implemented by unanimity and would have to involve virtually all the member-states.
Both these assumptions are now under attack, and diplomats say it is inevitable now that the Feira summit in June will agree to add to the IGC agenda discussion of removing the unanimity requirement and reducing the required number of participants.
A Franco-German initiative on the issue is expected any day, and Mr Gama and others join them in arguing that flexibility is the constitutional magic bullet, the means to reconcile those who want greater and faster integration with those satisfied with the inter-governmental relationships that still dominate many aspects of EU activity. In other words, the means to prevent future paralysis.
Brian Cowen, at his first informal, and acquitting himself very well according to one veteran participant, adroitly turned the tables on the integrationists by taking up a traditionalist theme that should have been close to their hearts.
Warning of the dangers of abandoning the community method of decision-making and of diluting the central role of the Commission as defender of the small states and of the collective community interest, he berated the increasingly evident bilateralism which sees initiatives emanating from capitals rather than the Commission.
The EU's existing institutional balance had served well, he argued, and they should be wary of constitutional tinkering which could produce God knows what.
Irish officials say they fear the emergence of a two-tier Europe, but insist that Ireland's place if it emerges will be at the core. Yet this is not the sort of Europe we should be aiming for, they say. Mr Cowen warned that the EU "must not become a rich man's club". Others warn of the damaging signals being sent to the accession states: "You can join the club, but we will keep you out of its inner recesses".
But the flexibility bandwagon is rolling on. France has recently joined its ranks, and President Chirac spoke last week of his country's particular responsibility as the motor of the EU and of the need for radical institutional reform. Its Foreign Minister, Hubert Vedrine, has admitted that a second Inter-Governmental Conference may be needed ahead of enlargement to do the necessary.
And on Friday the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, a supporter of flexibility who has recruited Mr Schroder to its cause, is due to make a speech on the issue.
Significantly, at the weekend the British, still very unenthusiastic, indicated they would not die in the ditch to prevent reform. Few, including Ireland, will want to be seen to impede what a growing number are being persuaded is a critically important dimension of an enlarged Europe.
Yet, ask them what specific projects they have in mind which are so dependent on simplified flexibility provisions, and you will get a lot of bemused scratching of heads. But it's self-evident, they say: we will need them with enlargement. Indeed?
And how will they sort out the inevitable and nightmarish decision-making anomalies that will emerge in a Europe of multiple membership levels? No answer.
The Giscard/Schmidt article can be seen on the Website of Challenge, the lively new online journal of the Brussels think-tank, the European Policy Centre, www.theepc.be
psmyth@irish-times.ie
