Johnny Watterson rubs well-tailored shoulders at the European Olympic assembly in Dublin

It could have been a UN Security Council meeting or a session of the European Parliament. Large screens, five of them, with maps of Europe swirling around to the backdrop of an azure sky set the mood on day one of the two-day 34th European Olympic General Assembly in Dublin.

With their headphones, their translators, their mobile phones and the constant background of chatter, the movers and shakers in the European Olympic movements undertook some house cleaning and no little amount of bonding.

Olympic solidarity in any language is a man with a tan in a well-cut suit fronting a slick presentation of a bid city or an IOC-approved Olympic venue - Beijing, London and Turin.

We were informed by an able Italian woman that during next year's winter games, the IOC members would be staying in the centrally located Jolly Hotel.

What we saw and heard was the Olympic family disseminating to the world the word of Olympism, cheering those who carried the message and plying them with gifts. But in the IOC you mustn't take gifts and so His Serene Highness Prince Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre de Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco, Marquis of Baux was presented with a European Olympic Committee Order of Merit.

Albert, IOC president Jacques Rogge and OCI president Pat Hickey sat at the top table of 20 men and three women smiling like Cheshire cats and the 400 delegates applauded.

In the lobby, Ireland's only track gold medallist of modern times, Ronnie Delany, worked the room. It was that sort of day.

Sam Martin, the new CEO of the Irish Olympic Council and a hockey gold medallist with Britain in Seoul; runner, politician and lord, Seb Coe; and Bertie Ahern all rumbled in the cause of brushing shoulders and making the right noises.

The Taoiseach opened the Congress and in an "all politics is local type of way", talked up Dublin's rewards for London winning the 2012 games.

"The staging of the Olympics so close to Ireland in 2012 offers unprecedented opportunities for this country at many levels," he said. "By that time we will have a range of modern facilities of the highest quality in place. Lansdowne Road and the Campus and Stadium Ireland should be well developed by then."

So we will have a range of facilities and Campus Ireland should be well developed. You could wonder which one it is.

But a few ideas oozed out of the bonhomie and camaraderie. A global deadline for Olympic qualification for all sports is a goal, offered IOC president and former Belgian international rugby player Jacques Rogge. A welcome development given the strife in Ireland caused prior to Athens by differing deadlines and desperate athletes hoping to make qualification standards.

Rogge also pointed out that the Asian countries were gathering on the horizon and threatening to claim the lion's share of Olympic glory. At the Athens games, 52 per cent of the medals won were by Europeans, who numbered 50 per cent of those competing. With China set to host the Games in 2008, the Asian medal haul should rise significantly.

The drugs issue was also on the agenda and at the last Winter Games in Salt Lake City seven doping violations occurred compared to five in all of the previous winter Olympics.

There were also 26 positive tests recorded at the Athens summer games of 2004 compared to 11 in Sydney.

The IOC's read on that is the drugs war has been won. More cheats caught.

Another read could be that more athletes are using banned substances. But this was no time to quibble.

There were also winners and losers in the elections, in which host Hickey did not get involved. His position as secretary general was not being contested. But track cycling races over one kilometre fell off the Olympic programme as did a number of shooting events, while BMX racing for men and women promises to modernise the Beijing Games along with the 3,000m steeplechase for women and the 10k marathon swim for men and women.

In the culling and promotion of Olympic sports, rugby may well take note. Rogge also strongly hinted that the process of admitting new sports to the Olympics might be relaxed for future games. In that context "a two-thirds majority is probably too tough", he said. "That may have to be reviewed."

In the understated language of Olympic-speak, that is practically a directive.