THE Taoiseach will arrive at today's EU summit in the Dutch coastal resort of Noordwijk, he said yesterday, with a new sense of confidence about the Inter-Governmental Conference.
Mr Bruton's visit to Brussels on, Wednesday for a meeting with fellow European People's Party leaders has both reassured him about one of Ireland's central preoccupations, keeping our commissioner, and about the determination of all to conclude successfully the treaty negotiations in Amsterdam.
Today's meeting, entirely devoted to the IGC, should help to pave the way for that by setting the talks on their final lap with a clear sense of purpose. Indeed the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, is understood to have set the likely tone at Wednesday's meeting with an appeal to the leaders for ambition but cautioning against setting themselves a target they cannot achieve.
Diplomats say the meeting tour de table of the issues which each leader sees as key will give them a first chance since Dublin to assess for themselves the real bottom lines of their colleagues. It should provide a realistic basis for the final preparations in the capitals for Amsterdam.
For the Dutch presidency it will be an opportunity to find the right note to strike in the text of the final draft treaty text due in early June. Too integrationist, and the summit will be seen as an exercise in paring down ambitions and may provoke a most undesirable row with the newly co-operative British.
Too weak, and it will complicate the task of the summit - it's always easier to delete than to add at this stage of a negotiation.
The meeting will also provide a first real opportunity to size up the British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair, and probably for a final piece of pre-election grandstanding by President Chirac.
The most difficult challenge without a doubt, is the so-called Third Pillar, justice and home affairs co-operation, and the incorporation of the Schengen Treaty on passport-free travel into the treaty.
The British and Danes are strenuously resisting the moving of this area of co-operation away from inter-governmental decision-making. A compromise can be found by giving some role to the Commission, the court and MEPs but retaining the basic structure of the Third Pillar.
Diplomats say leaders will not be able to deal with the issue in detail today, although Mr Bruton is certain to want to express his hope that they can reach a formula which allows for a eventual convergence within the treaty of both Irish-British and Schengen separate free-travel areas. He said yesterday he had got some understanding for the Irish position at the EPP meeting.
One of the key discussions will be on the crucial constitutional innovation of this treaty negotiation, flexibility. Devised to allow coalitions of willing states to circumvent the gridlock of unanimity decision-making without having to set up organisations like Schengen outside the treaty, it is being seen by several states as undermining EU cohesion.
For the Irish a critical safeguard in this regard will be to give the Commission a strong role as defender of the treaty, preferably the sole right to initiate use of flexibility structures. The British, however, have been holding out for even more restrictive provisions, in particular the need for a unanimous vote of all 15 to allow the smaller group to proceed with "enhanced co-operation using the Union's institutions".
Mr Blair's comments on this issue will thus be of particular interest as the new government begins to show its hand in detail.
The devil is in the detail. The Dutch are also keen, if possible, to crack today the vexed issue of the eternal representation of the Union. While Maastricht gave the Commission the right, under mandate from ministers, to represent the Union in most trade negotiations at bodies like the WTO, it left out the burgeoning areas of investment, intellectual property and services.
Ireland, among others, is determined to extend the Commission's mandate to these areas and would regard failure to do so as a significant failure for the summit. But it is facing stiff resistance from France and Germany, in part the product of suspicion of the Commission, in part a sense that they can better defend their national interests by being at the talks table themselves.
