Debate on future of EU given an urgency by Irish rejection of Nice

It was just after 10.30 yesterday morning when Sweden's Prime Minister, Mr Goeran Persson, called the European Council to order in Gothenburg's heavily fortified conference centre.

Outside, protesters were smashing shop windows and hurling cobblestones at the riot police.

Inside, the EU leaders had only one thing on their minds - the impasse created by last week's referendum in Ireland rejecting the Nice Treaty.

Mr Persson uttered a few words of greeting and then announced that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, would like to address them.

Mr Ahern told his fellow leaders about the Government's disappointment with the referendum result and repeated Ireland's commitment to EU enlargement.

He stressed that there was little opposition in Ireland, even among opponents of the Nice Treaty, to admitting new member states to the EU.

But he said that the referendum result highlighted concerns about the direction of the EU that were shared by citizens of other member-states.

"The result of our referendum graphically underscores what I believe all of us around this table already know: that there is, unfortunately, a widespread sense of disconnection between the institutions of the union and its citizens," he said.

President Jacques Chirac of France was the first to respond to the Taoiseach. He said that, whatever steps the Government took to address the anxieties of the Irish public, there could be no renegotiation of the Nice Treaty and no postponement of enlargement.

Over the next two hours, the 15 leaders and the Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, considered the consequences of last week's vote and discussed how the EU as a whole could address the sense of alienation it expressed.

Mr Prodi said that EU summits were turning voters off and that the union should devise new ways of finding agreement.

The Austrian Chancellor, Mr Wolfgang Schussel, warned against moving too far ahead of public opinion with plans for reforming the EU. EU citizens already faced three big innovations - the introduction of euro notes and coins, the Rapid Reaction Force and eastern enlargement - and they just could not cope with too much change.

The Belgian Prime Minister, Mr Guy Verhofstadt, said that EU governments should mobilise to create a lobby in favour of European integration "to answer the no lobby".

All the leaders expressed their support for the Taoiseach and said they would help the Government in any way possible.

But Denmark's Mr Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said that any solution should be in place within a year - a hint that the Government should call a second referendum earlier rather than later next year.

Speaking to EU journalists later, the Taoiseach agreed that the timetable suggested by Mr Rasmussen was realistic and said that he hoped that the Forum on Europe would produce results in time for December's meeting of EU leaders in the Belgian royal palace of Laeken.

"I hope that when we come to Laeken in six months time, the Forum will have made considerable progress. I would hope that we could make considerable progress over the next six months but to find a total solution will take some time longer than that," he said.

Officials suggest that, if the Forum produces a consensus about the issues of concern to voters, the Government will propose legislation to enhance parliamentary scrutiny of EU matters and attempt to persuade the EU to agree to "declarations" addressing Irish concerns.

The discussion of Ireland's referendum result went on for so long that a discussion of the Future of Debate had to be cut short. That didn't matter. As a number of delegates noted yesterday, last week's referendum result has given the debate on Europe's future a greater sense of urgency than any number of statements by EU leaders.