Summit becomes a diplomatic Everest for Cowen to climb as euro allies leave him to it, writes Derek Scally
IRELAND'S UNWANTED day in the sun began in the driving rain. As if specially ordered for the occasion, politicians and journalists were greeted in Brussels yesterday with a traditional Irish soaking.
Irish officials wove their way around the dripping barbed wire which surrounded the Berlaymont building, anxious to escape the downpour, but also the press pack who were seeking soundbite solutions to the EU's week-old "Irish problem".
Just seven days after the No to the Lisbon Treaty, the Irish in Brussels are now the subject of the kind of discreet scrutiny usually reserved for the terminally ill.
Irish diplomats, so the gossip goes, have "aged years".
Everyone studies the faces of their Irish colleagues for indications of their progress through the grief cycle.
After paralysis, denial and anger in the last days, many of the Brussels Irish are in the bargaining stage, the EU gossips whisper, searching in a vain for a way out.
The grey day began with the man of the moment, Brian Cowen, squeezing into the VIP corner of the European Commission for a quick statement with its glassy-eyed president, José Manuel Barroso.
Cowen is far from home and dry, but at least he stayed dry.
Not everyone was so lucky.
On the street outside, former Socialist Party TD and No campaigner Joe Higgins called a press conference a little later which, under the EU's security procedures, had the status of an official protest.
Higgins, the determined security guards decided, could not cross the blockade.
That left him shouting across the barbed wire in the driving rain, as Irish journalists scribbled in their pads.
The sun finally came out, just in time for the arrival of the other EU leaders.
The Sun King himself, Nicolas Sarkozy, bounded out of his car like a well-heeled rock star and headed straight to his waving fans.
"Where are you from?" he asked, shaking hands.
"Ireland," came the reply.
His hand went limp and a pause followed as both sides hunted for something to say.
"Where's the wife?" ventured an Irish hack with idle insouciance.
"I'm on my own today," he remarked with a grin that admirers might term "winning", before disappearing inside.
Barely in the door and he was collared by Chancellor Angela Merkel, sending mixed signals to onlookers in a green jacket worthy of St Patrick's Day itself.
After enduring a few curt words from her, Sarkozy escaped and was next spotted stashing a handful of cigars out of sight. A present for the wife? The Germans milled around, anxious for a word, any word, from the Irish delegations.
"I can't remember when our Irish colleagues had as little to say as now," said one amazed Merkel adviser.
"Apart from friendly words, they're saying absolutely nothing, not even what Mr Cowen has said in public."
Cowen, so the summit gossip goes, will be subjected to Chancellor Merkel's "velvet glove strategy". Before the summit ends this afternoon, however, the German side has not ruled out giving the Taoiseach a glimpse of the iron fist beneath. As the leaders met in splendid isolation on the top floor of the Justus Lipsius building, the press milled around below.
"We need an open discussion here at the council like we have at the European Parliament," said Mr Martin Schulz, leader of the parliament's Socialist bloc.
With a nod to the one-way glass windows above, he said: "It's time that perpetual Vienna Congress up there finally opened its doors." As the first day of the Brussels summit ended in a mood of perplexed strain, journalists decamped to the bar to watch Germany beat Portugal on the soccer pitch.
No velvet glove strategy there. And for the Brussels Irish, not qualifying for the European Championship suddenly seemed like a lucky escape.