Early yesterday morning in Brussels the farm talks collapsed. France's President Chirac said they should begin again from first principles.
And last night after a bruising round of negotiations in Bonn the EU's heads of government came out unable to say significantly more than that they were committed to doing a deal by the end of next month on the full Agenda 2000 proposals.
Despite appearances to the contrary, the German presidency is convinced it can be done. The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joscha Fischer, argued last night that although "they haven't moved closer, their positions are now so clear that they are starting to shake".
Chancellor Gerhard Schroder described the meeting as constructive, open and a "clear basis on which to work".
In essence, the argument goes, all negotiations go through the same phase of ill-temper and confrontation before settling into a more pragmatic search for a settlement. But the Germans have one hell of a gap to bridge. Defending his demand for a substantial German rebate, Mr Schroder insisted that "solidarity is not a one-way street. It also has to do with fairness" - sentiments which would be cheered to the echo by Ireland and the other Cohesion countries demanding extra spending.
But quite apart from those articulators of national interest, many observers of both the farm talks and the summit are wondering whether the figures of those making a case for stabilisation add up. "Stabilisation should not be allowed to become a fetish," the Commission president, Mr Jacques Santer, told the final press conference yesterday.
Even the presidency's own last compromise paper in the farm talks is alleged to have exceeded their proposed budget ceiling of £32 billion. And is it realistic to expect countries like Ireland and Portugal to take cuts of up to 70 per cent in their structural funding, as some of the more outlandish stabilisation proposals seem to imply?
French diplomats were complaining yesterday that those who had demonstrated their willingness to understand the German position and come up with ways of dealing with their excessive payments had not seen any reciprocal gesture on Bonn's part. Nor was it reasonable, they say, for the Germans both to demand their money and to insist that it must be done in the way they say.
The Paris-Bonn axis is somewhat frayed these days. The German summit summary paper made few concessions to national sensitivities. On the controversial issue of "co-financing", or renationalisation of the CAP budget it says that "notwithstanding the possible introduction of co-financing . . . an examination should be made of degressivity of direct payments". A red rag to the French bull - Paris, like Dublin, insists it will not pay twice and most commentators believe they will veto cofinancing. Last night the Taoiseach said he believed that co-financing would be successfully resisted.
The paper tried with only partial success to describe a broad consensus on a number of key issues: - an overall ceiling of member-state payments set at 1.27 per cent of community GDP, though still with a Spanish reserve;
- the ring-fencing of accession money so that it can not be plundered for other projects;
- the simplification of structural funding to three objectives;
- a ceiling of £32 billion for farm spending by 2006 plus whatever is agreed for rural development was not agreed;
- nor was a ceiling of £160 billion for Structural and Cohesion funding;
- an eventual modification of the contribution ("own resources") system to base it much more closely on GNP.
Also, the Irish negotiators will take some comfort from the strong support given by the European Parliament for more moderate cuts in the CAP reform.
Addressing the leaders at the start of their meeting the President of the Parliament, Mr Jose Maria Gil Robles, also argued that structural policies are "a cornerstone of the EU's work" and that the EU's spending of 0.46 per cent of EU GDP on the policies should be seen "as an objective, not an upper limit". The Parliament must give its approval to any final package agreed by the leaders.
Mr Gil Robles's apt description of the meeting later was typically national. "In bullfighting terms, it is a summit in which a bull's weak points are assessed. The Berlin summit will be a long bullfight indeed."