Over the next six months the Government will have the interesting privilege of attempting to achieve consensus on the proposed EU constitution. Only Bertie Ahern seems to really believe that the Irish will pull off that particular miracle, writes Breda O'Brien.
The Economist, for example, in a recent analysis, skipped straight from a disapproving dissection of the Italian presidency to looking forward warmly to the presidency of the "steady, reliable Dutch".
The Irish did not feature on its radar at all. The Economist is not alone. Many within the EU do not expect the impasse to be resolved before the end of 2004, if at all.
The idea of an "ever-closer Union" has been around since the very first treaty, but few of the ordinary citizens of the nation-states of the EU have believed that it would really happen. Jean Monnet, the pragmatic idealist, believed that European unification would never happen if the ideal were attempted all at once.
Instead, begin with the modest achievement of economic co-operation between six states and ensure the process achieves a kind of irresistible momentum through ever-closer economic and political links.
So, in a sense, the European enterprise has had a kind of Trojan horse mentality from the start. To give just one relatively recent example, before the Nice Treaty anyone suggesting that it would open the way to a two-tier Europe was derided as a scaremonger.
Now, when Mr Prodi confirms those fears, Bertie Ahern is forced into launching one of his relentless smiley charm offensives as a cover-up.
There has been much talk of the American Founding Fathers, and the process of framing the American constitution. There are some superficial similarities. The question of balance between the centre and the constituent states is one problem shared by the framers of the American constitution and the EU convention.
The Americans resolved it by giving power over foreign policy, trade and defence to the federal government. Unfortunately, foreign policy and defence could scarcely be more contentious for the EU. The fault lines revealed by the Iraq war still gape, leaving France and Germany on one side and Britain, Spain, Poland and many of the future Eastern European members on the other.
The framers of the American constitution were motivated in part by the madness of George the Third. He suffered from porphyria-induced instability, and his addled decisions led directly to the American Revolutionary War.
Several of the most influential European states are worried by what they see as the madness of another George, George Bush. They are determined to see the EU emerge as a counterbalance to US power. All very well, if every European state were in agreement with that assessment of Bush, but the opposite is the case.
Europe is not just divided on foreign policy. Over and over during the EU negotiations, the smaller states expressed their displeasure at the bullying tactics of the larger states, which are pushing for representation according to population size.
The Americans devised a system where each state receives equal representation in the Senate, and representation roughly by population in the House of Representatives. No such elegant solution exists for the EU.
It is a fundamental conundrum. It may be ridiculous that small nation-states have powers which are completely disproportionate to their size, but how else do you preserve their dignity and autonomy, and prevent them being steam-rollered by the larger states?
It does nothing to increase the confidence of smaller states when France and Germany flout with impunity budget guidelines which they have insisted that other states, including candidate states, adhere to. Nor does the notion of a two-tier Europe exactly calm fears.
It will be rather more difficult for Prodi's proposed avant-garde to criticise Eurosceptics for their lack of solidarity and commitment to unity while simultaneously proposing an inner-circle EU with its own parallel institutions.
There are other problems that show that the resemblance to the American Founding Fathers is superficial. True, many of the 13 colonies cherished their prickly independence. However, they were also aware that they were doing something new, founding a common enterprise to which they could give allegiance.
It is simply impossible to imagine anyone designating themselves as Irish-European, in the way in which Irish-Americans happily claim that title. The new America had the cachet of being shaped by heroes, the patriots of the revolution. The EU constitution was designed by not one but several committees.
The result is not just the proverbial horse designed by a committee, that is, a camel. It is a two-headed camel, and the heads face in diametrically different directions.
The new Americans had a strong motivation to achieve unity, not least because they had a powerful enemy in common, the British Empire. The ordinary European citizen sees no particular reason to move any closer.
The debate about God or religion in the constitution is just one indicator of the deep divisions in Europe over very central issues. In nation-states, such divisions are solved democratically. In other words, the minority agree to allow the majority to have their way.
However, within the EU there is no such intellectual or emotional consent to allowing the majority to hold sway. Therefore attempts to impose solutions smack of fascism, and are likely to inspire the same kind of resistance.
The main problem is that the American constitution could confidently begin with "We, the people". No such "We, the people" exists as yet in the EU. "We, the elites" might be more honest.
Giscard would like us to view the conventioneers and the EU they envisage in the same way as the project once endorsed and framed by George Washington and his peers. Sadly for him, many Europeans regard the whole EU project as Americans once viewed the aforementioned George the Third, remote, unpredictable and liable to capricious decisions.
The move to EU integration has been pursued like some kind of slow bicycle race - keep pedalling, no matter how grimly and torturously, or else we will all fall off. European integration is a noble ideal. The ideal is fatally undermined by the unwillingness to wait for a genuine democratic consensus to emerge from the peoples of the EU that would drive the process.