One small step for Europe and a giant step for Ireland - the contrast between the two referendum questions for May 22nd is instructive. While the vote on the Belfast Agreement will put in place radically new power-sharing structures, the Amsterdam Treaty's level of ambition is far less sweeping, a half-hearted 10,000-mile service rather than a complete overhaul.
Voters in Ireland, Denmark (on May 28th) and Portugal are being asked to ratify an agreement that in some respects is more of a political declaration of intent, a manifesto for Europe, than a traditional treaty. Indeed, in the rest of the EU, parliamentary ratification will be regarded as sufficient - in part recognition of the limited impact of the treaty on national constitutions.
The Single European Act and Maastricht Treaties launched grand new projects and significantly shifted sovereignty from national governments to collective EU forums - there was the completion of the single market, the extension of majority voting, and the single currency.
But the substance of the Amsterdam Treaty, complex as it may be, is largely about expressing in treaty form the key political priorities of heads of government on jobs, the environment, and crime. If they learned anything from the near rejection of the Maastricht Treaty, leaders were taught that the Union was in danger of losing touch with citizens, and whether constitutionally necessary or not, any new treaty would have to reflect their preoccupations.
The emphasis in employment is still on the problem being essentially a national one, although the EU is to be given an enhanced role in monitoring national performance and issuing guidelines recommending the best approaches to take. The British social policy opt-out is ended, and the treaty also strengthens equality rights.
On crime, the treaty substantially incorporates the programme of extensive police, judicial and administrative co-operation agreed by justice ministers at the end of the Irish presidency - the day the former Taoiseach John Bruton hoped to see, of a European FBI, is still some way off. The closest the treaty comes to that is in enhancing the role of Europol, the Hague-based police intelligence pooling and co-ordination system.
More extensive co-operation of the Union's immigration authorities is included through the incorporation of the Schengen Treaty on passport-free travel into the Amsterdam Treaty, but both Ireland and the UK have kept an opt-out from this area of co-operation in order to preserve their own common travel area. If at any stage we should wish to opt in to all or part of Schengen, we retain the right to do so.
Most controversially from an Irish perspective, the treaty does give the EU a new military dimension for the first time, but one limited at this stage to peacekeeping and humanitarian tasks, or peacemaking of the kind seen in Bosnia.
While the Government and main parties all insist that the treaty's wording does not imply any further commitment to a common defence than that given in Maastricht, those opposed to it argue that it is another nail in the coffin of neutrality. They are particularly hostile to any involvement in the Western European Union, which they see as an offshoot of NATO whose defence strategy is based on the nuclear deterrent.
The Government insists that the treaty provisions are copperfastened by a solemn pledge that any future attempt to end neutrality will be put to the electorate in a referendum.
The treaty also reinforces the Union's foreign policy dimension by creating a new unit to deal with forward planning and analysis of foreign and security policy issues.
In terms of streamlining decision-making, the treaty is widely seen as having failed to grasp the nettle of significantly reducing veto voting, leading to fears of policy gridlock when the Union expands to 20 member-states and beyond. Few doubt there will have to be an Amsterdam II.
But a key Irish and small-state concern, protecting our automatic right to have a commissioner, was safeguarded. In the end, however, one suspects that the vote will be less about the specifics of the treaty and the niceties of legal arguments about what it means, and more about a general sense of whether the Union is a good thing and heading roughly in the right direction.
And, significantly, it will be the first verdict delivered in Ireland on the EU as a political project in the beginnings of the post-structural fund era.
Fears, whether rational or irrational, about loss of sovereignty or the erosion of neutrality will vie with those who desire to see the newly self-confident Ireland at the centre of Europe. It will be a contest between those who see the winds of globalisation as a challenge to be met by battening down the hatches and those who want to build a bigger boat and hoist more canvas.