The success of the Irish EU presidency should be used to help build stronger links in the EU, writes Brigid Laffan.
The Irish have a reputation for running good EU presidencies ever since the first in 1975. This, the sixth, was the most challenging because of the range of highly charged issues involved and the increased scale of the Union following enlargement. It was also the best.
The key to success is preparation. Irish preparations were meticulous; over three years ago, planning began on the presidency programme and on the logistics. Spearheaded by Foreign Affairs and the Taoiseach's Department, every Department put in place the personnel and structures to manage the presidency. Ministers undertook pre-presidency visits all over Europe and beyond. Key relationships were established.
Irish presidencies combine good planning with sufficient flexibility to respond to changing political circumstances. Irish negotiators are team players. Ease of personal contact and humour are all deployed to good effect in the negotiating game. The success of the presidency owes much to the personal engagement, skill and commitment of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, and the Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Dick Roche.
The day to day work of the presidency is run from Brussels. There, Ireland's Ambassador Ms Anne Anderson and her team in the permanent representation moulded the agenda and effectively ran the business of the Council. Ms Anderson is the first woman member of the high-level Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) and it is a testimony to her diplomatic and administrative skills that her peers deemed her stewardship of that very male club an enormous success.
Presidencies are remembered for the big occasions and agreements that are reached. May 1st, the day of welcomes for the new member-states, marked a truly historic day. The flag-raising ceremony in Dublin Castle hit just the right tone. It was one of the few times when political protest about the EU seemed petty and ungenerous.
The key achievement of the presidency was agreement on the constitution in June. Last July, there was every expectation that the Italian presidency would conclude the negotiations by December 2003. Their failure left the Irish with a formidable challenge and a lot of bruised relationships to deal with.
The Irish dampened down expectations but began to establish the key relationships and amass the intelligence on which a final agreement could be fashioned. The presidency began with a listening phase through extensive bilateral consultations so as to build up a picture of the key issues and concerns.
There is no doubt that the Madrid bombings and the subsequent change in the Spanish government altered the political environment. Following its installation the negotiations entered their intense period in the lead-up to the European Council in June. Formal meetings at foreign minister-level were augmented by meetings of officials, and finally the European Council itself, where the Taoiseach had to steer the negotiations to their conclusion.
By this stage, there was sufficient trust in the capacity of the Irish to reach a balanced and fair agreement that all member-states were prepared to agree to the terms of the constitution.
The combination of the Taoiseach's negotiating skills and the work of Mr Bobby McDonagh, head of the EU division in Foreign Affairs, and his small Inter Governmental Conference (IGC) team proved formidable. It is noteworthy that Ireland had three diplomats working on the IGC whereas Sweden without the presidency had six.
Other successes of note were the improvements in trans-Atlantic relations and the naming of the new president of the Commission. The difficulty of reaching agreement on the latter confirms my view that the president should be elected either by the national parliaments and European Parliament combined, or directly elected by the people.
Now that the presidency has ended what should be learnt from it?
There are lessons for public policy-making at home, the management of EU business in Dublin, and for our position in the enlarged Union. The management of the presidency demonstrates that the Irish system of public administration can co-ordinate effectively across central government.
The organisation of the presidency holds lessons for project management, a chronic weakness in the Irish system. That said, the model of decentralisation that is being pursued at present will exacerbate co-ordination problems and would have made the management of the presidency very difficult. No modern state attempting to govern a complex society would embark on this model of decentralisation.
It demonstrates an extraordinary disregard for the key principles of good government and a lack of knowledge about how organisations function. Because we inherited our institutions, we have an under-developed appreciation of the role of institutions in political and economic life.
The lessons for the management of European business in Dublin and Ireland's position in the Union are no less important. In the run-up to the first Nice referendum, Ireland's European policy was in drift and attention to European issues had weakened both at political and administrative level.
The response to Nice I was the establishment of a Forum, improved parliamentary scrutiny, and enhanced co-ordination in central government. These improvements must be maintained and all politicians must be aware of their responsibility to communicate with the electorate about European issues.
Ministers and officials have built up very good relationships in the other member-states and the entire Irish administration has had intense engagement with the EU agenda across the range of issues. This knowledge should not now be dissipated. The Irish system must continue to foster a cadre of EU specialists and to develop a very systematic approach to bilateral relations with the other member-states.
Ireland's geographical position and its lack of a natural club of like-minded states, unlike the the Nordics or the Benelux, pose their own challenges for positioning Ireland in the enlarged Union. The relationships established during the presidency should be nurtured and creative ways found for coalition-building in the future. Ireland should also use the success it has made of membership as a model for the new member-states to act as a bridge between the new and old member-states.
• Brigid Laffan is the Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics at the Dublin European Institute, UCD