THERE’S NOTHING like a few daffodils to lighten the mood and so it was for the Irish in Brussels yesterday. With a daff pinned to his lapel, a nod to Daffodil Day back home, Taoiseach Enda Kenny glided into summit two, day two, looking noticeably more relaxed than day one.
The reason: with our financial fate on hold pending the bank stress tests, Kenny knew the second round of Brussels talks would be about Anything But Ireland.
With Libya in flames, Portugal on the ropes and Japan in hell, it wasn't so much a case of Irish schadenfreude– joy at others' misfortune – as guilty relief that, after six unrelenting months, other countries are now attracting EU leaders' attention.
In the hulking Justus Lipsius building, Enda’s fake daffodil chimed nicely with the boxes of bright yellow blooms slung around the conference room.
A stickler for detail pointed out that these were not classic daffodils but the smaller narcissus, named after a young man who became so obsessed with his own reflection that he fell into a pool and drowned. Either way, the EU 27 were not reflecting on Ireland and the danger of drowning had passed – for now.
The mood in the Irish camp was more upbeat than of late; by the time the daffodils or narcissus come out again next year, they hope Ireland will be on course to buy blooms with its own money.
Extending to 101 this newspaper’s glossary of Irish euphemisms, the Dublin delegation insisted there was “great sympathy for the Irish”. If only we could pawn sympathy for cash.
After his contretemps two weeks ago with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Kenny said all was well again in Franco-Irish relations.
“The Gallic spat is concluded pro tem,” beamed Kenny. “We shook hands a few times.” True to form, the hyperactive French president has shifted his gaze – what one EU diplomat called the “attention laser” – from Ireland to Libya.
German sources say Sarko was characteristically gung-ho on Thursday night about the need for further military action in Libya until chancellor Angela Merkel and others talked him down from the ledge and back into the European consensus.
Sarko was still smoking when he crash-landed into a post-midnight press briefing, giving what a sleepy-eyed hack in attendance described later as a “a 45-minute soliloquy on Libya”.
Five hours later, Sarkozy had bounced out of bed again – did he even lie down? – and was chasing British prime minister David Cameron around the Royal Park.
“Nicolas and I had a good run,” Cameron said later. “I practised some of my French, which is very bad, but we managed to have a good conversation, mainly about Libya.” For the record, Sarkozy’s motorcade was slightly larger, but Cameron was a slightly faster jogger.
Perhaps for the next summit, to avoid stress test stress, Enda Kenny can stimulate Sarko’s good-mood endorphins by swapping his daffodil for a pair of runners and a joint jog.
