A great deal is at stake for the future of Europe and the European Union at the summit meeting beginning in Copenhagen this evening. The final financial arrangements with 10 candidate states have to be agreed.
So has a date to begin entry negotiations with Turkey. That decision is intimately bound up with a peace agreement in Cyprus and with the future relations between the EU's Rapid Reaction Force and NATO. It is the most complex and multi-faceted set of decisions to have faced the EU. Success or failure will affect its fortunes and that of the continent as a whole for years to come.
This enlargement of the EU brings the division of Europe agreed at Yalta and implemented during the Cold War decisively to an end. It brings the revolutions of 1989 towards political completion by extending and affirming norms of democratic stability, the rule of law and protection of human rights to the candidate states. They have made the difficult and costly transition to functioning market economies under the umbrella of the EU's acquis communautaire. To qualify for membership they have had to demonstrate they can take on all the demanding obligations of membership laid down at a previous Copenhagen summit in 1993.
Looking ahead, the summit must decide whether to set a date for Turkey to open negotiations and when it should be. The case for doing so is strong on political and cultural grounds; it is best made by making these "Copenhagen criteria" central to the assessment of Turkey's candidature. Cyprus, too, would benefit hugely from a settlement based on this summit's decisions. They could also remove a Turkish veto preventing the development of the EU's new security and defence arrangements.
Bargaining on the final stages of the financial package goes down to the wire at this summit. All the €40.5 billion allocated to the candidate states for 2004-6 has been agreed. The Danish EU presidency proposed a package of more than €1 billion in addition to that, which pleased neither the net contributor states nor the candidates; the final bargaining has to do with demands, from Poland especially, that this be further improved. It is a demeaning business compared to the scale and nobility of what is at stake for Europe, but utterly normal in the final stages of such negotiations. On the outcome will depend attitudes towards the deal, which governments of the candidate states will have to sell to their electorates in forthcoming referendums. It would be an avoidable disaster if the summit broke down on financing and it should not be allowed to happen by either side.
From the Irish point of view this summit should conclude the Nice Treaty saga created by its rejection in last year's referendum and acceptance last October. That cleared the way for negotiations to conclude this weekend on EU enlargement. Ireland has much to gain from this process as it unfolds in coming years.