EU leaders gathered in snowy Helsinki last night for what was being billed as the "enlargement summit" amid concerns that, once again, the sound of distant gunfire would detract from the desired picture of European strength and harmony. And there were massive storm clouds gathering over beef and deeply controversial tax proposals.
Two summits earlier in the year, in Berlin and Cologne, were dominated by the beginning and the end of Kosovo's war, and now impotent EU leaders can only sit idly by and exhort the Russians to moderate their assault on Grozny, aware that more draconian measures could tip Russia's delicate electoral balance.
A stern warning will probably have to do, with some curtailing of cash and food aid and the suspension of the signing of science and technology agreements. But hardly a sign of strength.
As talks continued early this morning, EU Finance Ministers failed to reach agreement on a compromise between Britain and its partners over a tax on interest on savings in non-resident accounts which the British believe is a threat to their multi-billion dollar Eurobond market.
A compromise package proposed by the Commission and the Finnish Presidency was being considered that goes a long way to meeting British concerns but the Finnish Finance Minister would only say last night that he was less pessimistic than he had been. The French refusal to lift the beef ban is bound to raise the temperature, with the British delegation smarting from criticism that it has been too soft on the French until now. In Brussels, the Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, Mr David Byrne, said the Commission was giving Paris five days' notice of legal action.
But the real business of the summit is supposed to be enlargement, the largely uncontroversial invitation to six more countries - Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Malta - to join accession negotiations and almost certainly "candidate" status for Turkey.
The decision marks a significant shift in policy on accession - in somewhat diluting the strict conditions previously deemed necessary for candidates to join accession talks, the demotivating experience for those left behind last year has been recognised.
Only to a point. There has been intense pressure ahead of the summit from front-running countries like Hungary and Poland to be given a specific target date for their accession. But the member-states are united in their determination only to set a target date for the conclusion of their own preparation - the end of 2002.
And the same caution is reflected in the member-states' approach to treaty reform and the launch for that purpose of a new Inter-Governmental Conference. Ostensibly the idea is to limit changes to issues left over from Amsterdam.
The Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, insisted to journalists on Wednesday, however, that at least five countries support his call for radical changes to make future treaty reform easier. That was not the view of the Presidency.
Mr Prodi's success will be measured by the extent to which the IGC's remit leaves the door open to discuss his radical ideas.
But ambition has not been lacking in the defence and security dimension of the summit. The enthusiasm of the British and French for the development of an independent EU military capacity to act in crisis situations has accelerated the discussions set in train at Cologne about putting into operation the security aspects of the Amsterdam Treaty.
Already, by "double-hatting" Mr Javier Solana, the EU's security policy supremo, as head of the Western European Union, the EU has effectively annexed the latter. And the summit will agree to establish the capability to deploy a force of up to 60,000 to crisis situations where NATO does not want to become involved.
Meanwhile, at a parallel summit meeting here of European centre-right leaders from the allied EPP and EDU groups, the British Tories were given a stern lecture by EPP leaders, reminding them of the group's pride in its past at the vanguard of European construction, the leader of the EPP, Mr Wilfried Martens, said. The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, has sent the EPP a letter calling for it to review its ties with the Tories. Last night, he said he was pleased that merger between the EPP and EDU, of which the Tories are part, was off the agenda.