EU: Le Monde devoted three pages of its business supplement last week to a glowing assessment of Ireland's economic record and prospects.
The success of the Celtic Tiger, wrote Marie-Béatrice Baudet, could be ascribed to the resources devoted to education, the impact of European funding on infrastructural development, social consensus based on dialogue and partnership and to a corporate taxation policy which verged on dumping but which was tolerated by Brussels as fair recompense for the state's geographical peripherality.
Such success will inevitably have its imitators. "It is not just by chance," wrote Baudet, "that the new member states have, over the past two years, been multiplying their missions to Dublin to get to know more closely how these devilish Irish really do it. And to learn from it ... At their expense, moreover."
Fiscal competition is now about to set in in earnest: "Poland is to cut its company taxation from 27 per cent to 19 per cent, Hungary from 18 per cent to 16 per cent, Latvia from 19 per cent to 15 per cent; the Czech Republic proposes to go from 28 per cent to 24 per cent between now and 2006." Together with much lower wage levels, these tax cuts are certain to make central European locations more attractive to multinationals, a process we have already seen with Philips's transfer of its European accounting function from Dublin to Lodz in Poland.
There are swings and roundabouts everywhere, however. Le Monde believes Ireland will be able to compensate for its losses with other gains from increased investment in research, in biotechnology and nanotechnology for example; and though Lodz gained 500 jobs for accountants, the city lost another 600 at the same time as a textile factory moved out to Romania.
It was a week of cautiously optimistic noises on the prospect of reaching agreement on national voting weights in the European Council, the main unfinished business inherited by Ireland after the failure of the Brussels summit in December.
Reporting on Monday's foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, Madrid's ABC quoted the Spanish minister, Ana Palacio, as saying there was now a "window of opportunity" to reach agreement and there was no point letting matters slide until the Dutch presidency, as "things will not be easier in six months".
"Even the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin" agreed, said ABC, that the 25 countries were determined to find a solution as soon as possible. The problem, however, the newspaper added, was that while the obvious solution was to arrive at a formula which would satisfy Germany by taking into account its population size while preserving for Spain and Poland their status as large countries, practically speaking, things were the same now as they had been six months ago. Spain was awaiting a proposition, which it would examine with great interest and in a constructive spirit. "For the present," ABC said, "no one is making one."
There was a similar air of expectation in Warsaw. "Poland is like a single girl waiting for a proposal," said Tadeusz Iwinski, an adviser to Prime Minister Leszek Miller, who was in Dublin on Thursday for talks with the Taoiseach. The proposal that was apparently being floated, that larger states might get two commissioners and extra seats in the European Parliament, did not appeal however. "This is a fairy tale which does not interest us," Mr Iwinski told Gazeta Wyborcza.
Rzeczpospolita reported that Mr Miller's negotiating stance in Dublin seemed more flexible. "Nice or death was not the slogan of the government but of the opposition," he insisted. But Nice would still have to be the basis for any deal.
The time available to secure a breakthrough during the Irish presidency may be shorter than we thought. The Taoiseach is due to report back to his European colleagues in about a month. If he has failed to find a formula by then, Ireland will abandon its mediation efforts, Rzeczpospolita reported.
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, reporting from New Hampshire for the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit, felt Howard Dean's campaign could be as good as over after two consecutive defeats to John Kerry. Nonetheless, the Democrats had reason to be grateful to him. "For it was he who proved that opposition was still possible after the terrorist attacks. Dean has lined the party up against George Bush. In the meantime, his competitors have become nearly as aggressive as he himself. It looks as if the Democrats, in a cathartic process, have found the power of speech again."
The most elegant speech, Kleine-Brockhoff thought, was coming from John Edwards, half-preacher, half-lawyer, whose soft southern accent, unquenchable optimism and left-wing populism was eliciting strong support, particularly among women voters. Reminiscent for some of JFK, Senator Edwards could, Kleine-Brockhoff thought, be a rocket just awaiting ignition.