The President of the European Commission, Mr Jacques Santer, was dissuaded at the last moment at yesterday's formal signing ceremony at the royal palace in Amsterdam from delivering a bluntly critical attack on the very treaty Europe's leaders had come to sign.
"I do not hide the inadequacies, the weaknesses and the great gaps - notably in the field of institutional reform," Mr Santer had planned to say, according to a draft text of his speech obtained by the Guardian.
The Commission president had also planned to call for a new inter-governmental conference "as soon as possible", to prepare "profound reforms". But when it came to the formal signing in the royal palace before Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Mr Santer was persuaded to back off. He kicked the idea of a new inter-governmental conference far into the future, "after the year 2000".
The Dutch coalition government led by Mr Wim Kok, a modernising former trade union leader, was gloomy enough about the near failure of their Amsterdam summit without the EU president's public attack. The Germans, too, who played the blocking role on institutional reform at the treaty negotiations, did not want a public reminder of the moment when they began to sound and act like British Tories.
So Mr Santer finally echoed the bland cliches of the other speakers in the Burghers Hall, hailing "new steps towards a real European Community. . . the contours of the new Europe of the 21st century are now clearly drawn".
Not even the Dutch hosts were prepared to go quite that far. Mr Kok defended the treaty he had crafted as "possibly rather modest but an essential step on the road to further European integration". Looking on the bright side, they all agreed to call Amsterdam "the people's treaty", praising its establishment of a new European citizenship, its new dedication to job creation and to social and environmental protection - and the right to suspend any member state which breached "the fundamental principles of human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law".
"We have drawn the lessons of Maastricht - it has at last appeared indispensable in the eyes of all to meet the concerns of our citizens," Mr Santer had planned to say. In the event, he claimed more humbly: "We have tried to meet the citizens' concerns."
As he spoke, Mr Santer raised his eyes to the statuary group by the roof of the 17th-century palace which depicted the figure of Justice, holding an axe, whips, pincers and what the guidebooks call "other implements of torture" in her lap. Indeed, at times Mr Santer looked as if he had been threatened with their use.
This did not stop a noisy crowd of protesters from jeering the leaders as they came and left the ceremony in the palace yesterday. The crowd also released blue balloons bearing anti-European slogans that bounced festively around the white-stockinged legs of the royal footmen.
Not many of Europe's real power brokers had bothered to show up to hear these protests, nor to witness the signing.
A plea for action, page 12 Editorial comment: page 13