SATISFACTION. The Italian Prime Minister, Mr Romano Prodi, managed to get a lot of it at the summit. His beaming face, as he hosted Saturday's final news conference along with European Commission President Jacques Santer, had the message writ large all over it We (Italy) did well, boys, didn't we?
A front page cartoon in that morning's Rome daily, La Repubblica, had depicted Mr Prodi doing a rodeo bucking bronco act astride a British "mad cow" with a face which bore a stark resemblance to that of the British Prime Minister, Mr Major.
The cartoon was titled "An Italian Success", with the clear implication that Italian diplomatic finesse had tamed the mad English dogs and cows who had come to walk about in the Florentine midday sun.
Nor was La Repubblica alone in the view that Florence represented a major Italian success. Nearly all Italian media coverage focussed on the domestic input to the resolution of the mad cow crisis.
The Turin daily, La Stampa, titled its European lead story, "Europe Makes Peace Over Mad Cow - The Italian Presidency Concludes with a Success." The home town paper, La Nazione of Florence, gave the story an even more local flavour, writing: "Mad Cow, The Florence Peace".
The home team had struck a winning note right from the beginning, at the first and arguably most significant news conference of the Summit, given by Mr Piero Fassino, the Italian junior foreign minister.
Mr Fassino is a member of Democratic Left, someone long schooled in the international affairs department of the old Italian Communist Party (PCI). This was his first significant "outing" with the shirt of Italian democracy on his back.
Those expecting to find the former comrade ill informed dogmatic or ill at ease in his new role were to be disappointed. His first words made it clear that he knew this was a time to strut home team stuff, as he said: "I'm happy to announce that the European Council has arrived at an agreement on the issue of BSE an agreement based on proposals made by the Commission in recent days."
While Brussels Eurocrats will probably feel that the Italian delegation and media may overstate the case in favour of the home team, few would be churlish enough to deny that Italian diplomatic efforts played a not insignificant part in the resolution of the BSE crisis.
At least one senior diplomatic source at the Summit told reporters of the important role played by Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini, pointing out that while Mr Dini went out of his way to appear more accommodating to the British than some of the other EU partners, privately he put Britain under maximum pressure to come to an agreement at or before Florence so as not to ruin the summit.
Economics plenipotentiary and experienced Eurocrat Rocco Cangelossi admitted to quiet satisfaction, saying: "If you ask me, is all well that ends well, then I say, yes . . . there are other things we would have liked to resolve but ... I think we can say things have gone well."
From the Italian viewpoint, Florence not only witnessed the resolution of the BSE crisis but also rubber stamped a series of not unimportant achievements including the Slovenia association agreement, the green light for Europol (the so called European FBI), the successful completion of stage one of the Intergovernmental Conference's huge and complex review of the entire European Union, an agreement on electricity markets and, of course, on further discussion on employment and monetary union.
With regard to the latter questions, Mr Prodi repeatedly drew attention on Saturday to the timing of Italy's mid week $10.5 billion dollar mini budget just 48 hours before the summit. This corrective mini budget, said Mr Prodi, was timed so close to the summit in order to send a clear signal to the European partners.
Namely, Italy is serious about bringing its economy into line with the Maastricht convergence criteria. In this regard Prof Prodi repeatedly affirmed Italy's determination to be in the first wave of "Euro" currency countries.
Furthermore, the very nature of the mini budget package sent an important message, since the $10.5 billion was raised without tax hikes but rather through spending cuts and an increased clampdown on tax evasion.
In other words, getting your economy on line for the single currency does not always have to involve politically unpopular decisions.
One writes "not always" because, in Italy's case, such is the distance from convergence criteria that unpopular decisions can only be just around the corner.
In the meanwhile, however, Prof Prodi may have pointed out to his partners that the only significant lobby to object to his budget last week was the Confederation of Italian Industry.
Nor was it insignificant that Prof Prodi chose to kick off the final conference by saying that the council's meeting with the "Associated Countries" (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Czech Republic, Republic of Slovakia, Romania, Slovenia and Hungary)"expresses better than anything else the real meaning of European Union."
In a pre summit address at the European University in Florence on Thursday, Prof Prodi had claimed a prominent political and economic role for Italy in the forging of the new, enlarged union.
His emphasis on the meeting with the associated countries was a reminder of this claim. The implication was that Italy may be better placed geographically and historically than some of the partners to use its diplomatic skills in the creation of the new Europe.
Italians would argue that the Florence summit success only proves the point.