The real question is how to preserve balance between small and large states in enlarged European Union

`Man is a God when he dreams, but a beggar when he thinks." These words of Holderlin were quoted this week by the Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, in a keynote speech entitled "A Vision for Europe". He said we needed both dreamers and thinkers to guide the EU to its final destination.

The themes he addressed echo some of those raised this week by two Ministers, Sile de Valera and Mary Harney. But he is much more focused than they on the question of how to preserve the achievements of integration, especially the balance between small and large states which has worked to Belgium's and Ireland's advantage. That is surely the real nub of the debate opening up here and elsewhere on what he described as the ultimate goal of the European Union.

He spoke strongly in favour of the community approach to European integration, warning of a drift towards inter-governmentalism in its decision-making procedures. He warned that such a trend could end up with rule by a directoire of the larger states, in which the smaller ones were marginalised. That is why he sees widening the EU's membership through enlargement as intimately connected with deepening it.

The point is important, given the fact that a power shift is probably under way as we face into the concluding stages of the current Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC), due to conclude at Nice in December. Increasingly, we are invited to consider defining the ultimate goal of integration in tandem with enlargement.

Mr Verhofstadt is concerned that this emerging post-Nice agenda could reduce the importance of the current IGC. The Government here is also concerned. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has warned on several occasions that he does not wish to be bounced into surprises at the IGC or beyond it by the French EU Presidency.

But the Ministers' focus on the undesirability of further integration is arguably precisely the wrong question to debate at this juncture. Indeed, the directives Ms de Valera complains about were agreed by her predecessors in office. Her objections are as much against Michael D. Higgins as against Brussels, given the way they are agreed between governments.

That is the nature of multi-layered governance at European level. European affairs have become part of domestic politics rather than foreign affairs. It is perfectly valid, indeed essential, to debate these points.

But we should beware of making a category mistake between what can be attributed to European integration and what is more properly seen as a straight political disagreement between neo-liberal and social democratic models of socio-economic affairs, between "American liberalism and European leftism", as Ms Harney put it.

European politics combines these two axes, integration/sovereignty and left/right. They should not be confused. In fact, most European liberal parties would take quite a different stance to hers on integration.

Ms Harney extols the virtues of the single European market, achieved by qualified majority voting; but she fears that deeper integration will be harnessed to impose social democratic norms of high taxation and welfare spending and over-intrusive regulation of business, to which the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrats Coalition is adamantly opposed.

Therefore she is against combining enlargement with deepening political union. She told RTE that the larger the Union got, the looser the arrangements would be, and that would be better for all member-states, particularly Ireland.

But the consequences for the European system as a whole, and especially for the smaller states of such a development, would be more dangerous than she allows. A looser arrangement would be bound to favour the larger states, which are the main beneficiaries of inter-governmentalism.

Marginalising the Commission and the community method of decision-making would, as Mr Verhofstadt argued, also create impotence and ineffectiveness. It would probably represent a substantial reversion to the balance-of-power models of inter-state relations that European integration was designed precisely to avoid.

Anyone proposing such a system should take full account of its costs; disintegration would be more conflictual, making the goals of peace and prosperity more difficult to attain.

THIS is not to suggest that existing methods can be extrapolated. They can't in a much larger EU. The question now is how best to preserve the balance between supranational integration, using qualified majority voting, and inter-governmental ones in which unanimity applies, in a much larger system.

The small states have championed integrated methods because they constrain the power of large states. It is quite clear now that many large state leaders are anxious to remove those constraints by depriving the Commission of a role in schemes for closer co-operation, or by giving the European Council meetings of heads of state and government a much more central role.

It is a misconception to describe integration as centralisation. Despite the extension of QMV to many more areas of the EU's competence, there is strong resistance to locating so much in Brussels and an active discussion - in Germany and Britain for example - on creating a catalogue of these competences to distinguish the various levels of governance.

That is part of the longer-term "constitutional" agenda emerging from this IGC. It is an exciting prospect, designed to re-engage citizens and restore democratic legitimacy to a maturing and novel system of internationalised governance.

It is also a misconception to define this as a super-state. Nobody makes such a proposal. Rather should attention be paid to how to combine the various levels of governing so that they will be effective as well as democratically accessible.

If Ireland opts out of dreaming about this as well as thinking about it, the Eurosceptic begging-bowl stereotype that we have availed of on EU transfers but are not willing to reciprocate now that they have done their job and are approaching net contributor status will appear to be justified.