GERMANY:GERMAN CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel assured Taoiseach Brian Cowen yesterday that she had no interest in allowing Ireland to be isolated in the EU.
Ahead of yesterday's summit in Brussels yesterday, the German leader made it clear that, even after the Irish No vote, Berlin was anxious to keep the EU functioning on the basis of unanimous decision-making.
"There's no way around it, no matter how strenuous it may be," she said.
"Unanimity is a prerequisite" and it was "unacceptable" and "careless" to call for a "core Europe" as soon as the EU ran into difficulties.
That remark was, in part, directed at her own foreign minister, Frank Walter Steinmeier, a leading social democrat. He had suggested that Ireland could take a "break" from the EU and let the 26 other member states proceed with the Lisbon Treaty.
Despite her public assurances that Ireland would not be pushed into a corner, however, Dr Merkel's closest EU advisers gave a frank assessment of the options from Berlin's perspective.
"We shouldn't appear to be putting a pistol to Ireland's breast," said a senior adviser to Dr Merkel, introducing a new metaphor to the post-referendum discussion.
In Brussels today, Berlin will be working on several fronts.
Firstly, it wants ratification to keep rolling after the Irish No vote, compared to the "period of reflection" that followed France's No vote in 2005.
"The French decided that they wouldn't vote on the same treaty again," said a Merkel adviser, "whereas a similar decision hasn't been taken in Ireland, neither has a decision to the contrary."
The second front is to stamp out any talk of a core Europe and a periphery, an idea that originated within Dr Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) in the 1990s.
"We will neither accelerate nor agree to a process of forcing core groups, side groups or any other variable geometry," a source said.
However, as Berlin worked on all these fronts yesterday, it was clear that Berlin's softly-softly approach has a time limit.
Dr Merkel received backing in her position yesterday from Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the European Parliament.
It was not the time to put Ireland under pressure, he said, while expressing the wish that any process would be completed before next year's elections for the European Parliament.