Swedish Presidency a success story

Flaming barricades, shattered windows, rows of black-clad riot police and a young man lying bleeding from a police bullet to the chest - these are the images from Gothenburg that will remain fixed in the public mind. The violence that turned this pretty Swedish port into an urban battlefield was unprecedented and could change the way the EU does business.

But the dramatic scenes on Friday night should not obscure the significance of the summit, which represented a resounding success for Sweden's EU Presidency and marked an important stage on the path to EU enlargement. A few weeks ago, some EU observers were predicting that Gothenburg would be a forgettable meeting at the end of a lightweight presidency.

Instead, it was the crowning achievement of six months of quiet diplomacy during which the Swedes achieved three important policy goals.

"We have achieved what we wanted on enlargement, got what we wanted as regards sustainable development and, as a non-aligned country, we have demonstrated just what we can achieve in the area of external policy based on commonly held values. That's what it's all about," Sweden's prime minister, Mr Goran Persson, said at the end of the summit on Saturday.

Ireland's rejection of the Nice Treaty threatened to overshadow the summit and to create uncertainty about the EU's timetable for enlargement. But the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, calmed much of the anxiety felt by Ireland's EU partners with a thoughtful statement explaining that the Government remained unsure of the motivation behind the anti-Nice vote but wanted to address voters' concerns while remaining committed to enlargement.

When Mr Ahern spoke about a sense of "disconnection" between European citizens and EU institutions, other leaders acknowledged that the sense of alienation from the EU expressed in the Irish vote was shared by many of their own citizens.

The Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, said he hoped to contribute to the Irish debate about Europe when he visits Dublin, Cork and Kerry later this week. "I go to listen to the Irish people. I don't believe for one minute or one second that Ireland voted against enlargement," he said.

Mr Persson confessed that he was perplexed by the referendum result. "The political situation in Ireland as Bertie explained it cannot be regarded as hostile to enlargement. If the treaty is about enlargement and everyone is in favour of enlargement but they vote against it, it's a little bit tricky," he said.

It remains to be seen whether Friday's controversial remarks by the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, stating that the Irish people should feel proud of their rejection of Nice, will undermine European support for the Government's strategy.

But EU leaders appear to be willing to address Ireland's concerns when they meet in the Belgian royal palace at Laeken in December and to leave it to the Government to determine the timing of any second referendum. In the meantime, other member-states will proceed with the ratification process and negotiations with the 12 candidate countries will continue apace.

The candidate countries received a boost on Saturday when the Swedish presidency faced down opposition from France and Germany and persuaded the EU leaders to declare that the most successful applicants should take part in the 2004 European Parliament elections "as members" of the EU.

Germany was concerned that setting a date for the first wave of enlargement could mean Poland could be left out of the first group of states in central and eastern Europe to join. Poland is the biggest and most important candidate country and Germany believes enlargement can only be meaningful if its eastern neighbour is included.

The problem is that Poland is lagging behind other candidates in the accession negotiations and progress is not expected to pick up until after parliamentary elections in September. Germany's chancellor, Mr Ger hard Schroder, suggested on Saturday that the target date of 2004 was an aspiration rather than a commitment and other countries may still have to wait until Poland is ready.

The heads of government from the candidate countries, who met their EU counterparts for lunch on Saturday, left Gothenburg feeling pleased that their hopes of early membership had received a boost and that the Irish referendum result would not upset their plans.

"It is very rare in life to have all your wishes fulfilled but this time it is so," said Hungary's Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Orban.

It is unlikely that EU leaders would have agreed to set a date for enlargement were it not for the fact that negotiations with the candidate countries had progressed so impressively during the Swedish presidency. In recent weeks, Swedish diplomats resolved difficult conflicts over the rights of citizens from new member-states to work elsewhere in the EU and the rights of EU citizens to buy land in the new member-states.

The most difficult negotiations remain ahead as the EU and candidate countries discuss such delicate issues as farm subsidies and structural funds. But as Sweden prepares to hand over the EU presidency to Belgium next month, the Scandinavians can look back on six months of solid achievement that the shock of the weekend's violence cannot obliterate.