Brussels: The Brussels summit was supposed to set the seal on a new chapter for the European Union. Instead, it ended in abject failure. Denis Staunton explains how it happened.
For a meeting that ended in such dramatic failure on Saturday, the Brussels summit got off to an remarkably good start the previous day, with EU leaders approving a number of major initiatives in less than an hour. After a 30-minute meeting with the President of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox, at 9.30 a.m. on Friday, the leaders raced through a discussion of the EU's first security strategy, a €62 billion investment plan and a cluster of foreign policy issues, including a declaration on the transatlantic relationship.
By 11 a.m. they had completed the agenda of the European Council, leaving the rest of the weekend free for negotiations on the constitutional treaty. Italy's prime minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, who chaired the talks, beamed as he faced the media at noon, even linking arms with his old rival, Mr Romano Prodi.
"Arm in arm, we'll tackle the problems of the world," Mr Berlusconi declared.
The first sign EU leaders received that they were in for a bumpy ride came over lunch in an upstairs room at the Justus Lipsius Building, when Mr Berlusconi suggested that they forget about Europe's problems for a while.
"Let's talk about women and football," he said.
Mr Berlusconi suggested that Germany's Mr Gerhard Schröder, who has been married four times, should start the discussion by "telling us about all your women". When a clearly uncomfortable Mr Schröder refused to play along, Mr Berlusconi suggested that Germany's foreign minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, who has also had four marriages, should take up the challenge.
"It was grotesque and pitiful," said one of those present.
The early end to the morning's business should have meant that negotiations on the treaty could begin earlier than the scheduled time of 5 p.m. The leaders had to wait, however, for Poland's prime minister, Mr Leszek Miller, who came to Brussels directly from hospital following a helicopter crash and was wheeled into the meeting.
By 4 p.m. the Taoiseach was complaining about the time already wasted, during which he was obliged to "twiddle my thumbs". When the meeting was convened, it lasted less than two hours and Mr Berlusconi announced that he would spend the rest of the evening in bilateral talks with other leaders. He said that the Italian presidency would table a new compromise proposal by 11 a.m. on Saturday, when the leaders would meet in plenary again.
Although Mr Berlusconi met most leaders bilaterally, the focus on Friday night was on the search for a compromise on the issue of voting in the Council of Ministers. France and Germany wanted to replace the system of weighted votes agreed at Nice with a "double majority" system reflecting population size. Under the new system, a qualified majority would be defined as a majority of member-states representing at least 60 per cent of the EU's population.
Spain and Poland, which enjoy almost as many votes as the EU's four biggest states under the Nice system, were resisting change. Most other countries were neutral on the issue, leaving Mr Berlusconi to broker a deal between France and Germany on the one hand and Spain and Poland on the other.
The meetings continued until 1 a.m. on Saturday and resumed at 9 a.m., by which time it was clear that there had not been enough progress for the presidency to present a compromise paper to the leaders.
In a succession of meetings on Saturday morning with the four protagonists and with Britain's Mr Tony Blair, Mr Berlusconi presented a number of compromise proposals.
The details remain secret, although Italy has promised to present the Irish presidency this week with documents outlining the options discussed. Diplomatic sources suggest that there were four proposals that won support from some of the four countries but none that received universal approval.
The first was to retain the Nice system but to give Germany more votes, an offer Mr Schröder rejected.
The second was to redefine a double majority as 55 per cent of member-states representing 65 per cent of the EU's population. The third was to introduce the double majority in 2009 unless a qualified majority of EU leaders decided to retain the Nice system. The fourth was to delay the introduction of the double majority until 2014 and to allow a qualified majority of EU leaders to block its introduction.
By the time they met for lunch at 1.30 p.m. the leaders knew that there was no prospect of finding a deal and were left with the task of presenting the summit's failure to the public and deciding what to do next.
Austria's chancellor, Mr Wolfgang Schuessel, called on the Taoiseach, as incoming EU President, to suggest what the next step should be.
Anxious to avoid raising unrealistic expectations, Mr Ahern suggested that Ireland should deliver a report on the prospects for agreement to the next EU summit in March. Mr Berlusconi thanked everyone in the room by name, including all his own officials and the meeting was declared to be over.
According to the Taoiseach, there was no sense of crisis as the meeting ended but the leaders accepted that they had simply tried to do too much, too fast.
"There was no sense of abandonment of the process, no bitterness, no recriminations," he said.
Ireland's presidency does not begin until next month and most leaders agreed that there should be a cooling-off period before negotiations resume, though the Taoiseach received a conflicting impression as he left the meeting.
"Six colleagues said to me going out the door: Happy Christmas, I'll be on to you next week," he said.