They were not drinking chateau wine throughout last Saturday's 11-hour Brussels lunch, as the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, said crossly on RTE on Sunday, although there were suspicions that a couple of his foreign colleagues were. But they were eating English lamb.
The British, who currently hold the EU presidency, and were chairing the vital EMU meeting, (despite staying out themselves), were displeased at the menu proposed in Brussels for the special economic summit, and demanded changes.
But they were so busy conducting bilaterals and trilaterals that they forgot their duty as hosts to direct the waiters to proceed with the next courses. Consequently there were long gaps, which can't have helped the humour of Helmut Kohl. At one stage, Jean Luc Dehaene suggested they all adjourn to a restaurant he knew down the street. He is a large Belgian who likes his food.
But this was minor wrangling compared to that over the chair of the new European Central Bank. British PM Tony Blair fell down badly on advance preparations, but because it was Europe, rather than anything else, he got high praise from his home media for solving a problem which, others said, he should never have allowed to happen in the first place.
What scorn would have been poured on us had we messed up so badly, some asked.
Blair and Jacques Chirac know each other. Roy Hattersley wrote in the Observer that Blair told Chirac some time ago that Britain would not agree to the rise in labour costs which the French sought, and Maastricht dictated. "Remind me," said Chirac to him. "You are leader of the British left and I am leader of the French right. Or is it the other way round?"