Is it time for Ireland to embrace EU integration?

The crisis of the epoch, Trotsky told his followers, was above all a crisis of leadership. Society was rotten ripe for transformation, the forces of change at hand. All it needed was for the all-too-timid workers' leaders to articulate a revolutionary programme, and the masses would follow.

There's a bit of Trotsky these days in the President of the European Commission, Mr Romano Prodi, the self-professed revolutionary of Europe. Where are the Kohls and Mitterrands now when we need them? Even the Thatchers? The Delors, the Gorbachevs? Those who could defy the stultifying dead hand of common sense, consensus, and incrementalism? Those who could stand back and see the wood for the trees, see history unfolding and bend it to their will?

Those close to Mr Prodi talk of a sense of a desperate lack of vision and leadership among Europe's leaders in facing up to the historic challenge of enlargement. Uncertain domestically, none has yet emerged as European-wide statesmen.

Mr Prodi's people fear that we will drift into the process without having grasped the nettle of fundamental reform of the institutions - a challenge that is acknowledged in the Amsterdam Treaty's requirement for not one but two treaty-changing Inter-Governmental Conferences (IGCs) before the EU takes in more than five new member states. And faced with a political challenge, Mr Prodi leads from the front. Truly the age of Santer has passed, that of Delors returned.

Hence Mr Dehaene and his "wise men", Britain's Lord Simon and Germany's former President Mr Richard von Weizsacker. "At this crucial moment in its development," their report insists, "the European Union should not lower its sights. It should rise to the challenge and formulate ambitions commensurate with that challenge."

Their report, clearly pre-cooked with Mr Prodi himself, raises proposals for treaty changes that the Amsterdam IGC did not even dare discuss and talks of reforming that treaty's radical flexibility provisions before they have even been used. Yet the member states had clearly set their sights on only the most limited of IGCs next year, confined to the unfinished business of Amsterdam, the number of commissioners, the reweighting of voting in the council, and some extension of qualified majority voting.

The reaction of the Taoiseach, Mr Bertie Ahern, to the floating of the proposals last weekend in Tampere was probably fairly typical of fellow leaders. Just because you call them a group of wise men, he said, it does not mean they are wise.

And anyway, he argued, this was work that should be done by the practitioners themselves, the heads of government. Mr Prodi, he clearly hinted, was getting above himself. But he clearly acknowledged as valid one of the imperatives driving the Dehaene logic, the need to get away from an endless series of cumbersome IGCs.

Mr Ahern reflects the instinctive Fianna Fail rejection of further integration, but he appears likely to have his instincts validated by conservative senior diplomats and even a high-powered group established by the Institute of European Affairs due to report soon on the IGC.

Yet it should really be asked if the time has not come for Ireland to embrace the inevitability of a more radical and trusting approach to integration - have we really found the veto so crucial? And are we willing to pay the price for the largely notional retention of that sovereign right - decision-making gridlock? On defence, Mr Ahern said, there was no way we would be going down the road of a mutual defence commitment - and in reality it is the least convincing part of the Dehaene document, almost half-hearted.

But there were others who were more positive. The Finnish President, Mr Martti Ahtisaari, said there were ideas worth considering. Since then Mr Tony Blair has been prepared to give broad welcome to the proposals, albeit putting down markers about individual areas of policy that should retain member state vetos, notably foreign and security policy and taxation. Few imagine it will be any other way. In the Commission on Wednesday there was only a preliminary discussion but Mr Prodi made it clear that he backed the report and would hope to see its conclusions form the basis of the commission's submission to the IGC. He is certainly convinced he will have no real difficulty from his team.

And one important ingredient of the report worth noting is the timeframe. Mr Dehaene argues, and the commission explicitly endorsed, the idea that whatever changes are made for enlargement should be completed by the end of 2000.

That tight schedule can be met, Mr Dehaene insists, if the IGC changes its working method and is willing to work from the basis of a draft treaty prepared by the commission from the start instead of writing one from scratch it should be possible to complete the work by next December.

All we need is the political will.

Patrick Smyth can be contacted at 100701.2431@compuserve.com