Cardiff may be remembered as an unexciting summit with few formal decisions taken. But it has set heads of government a formidable agenda of work over the next few months - no less than five formal and informal summits between now and the end of March. "A busy winter", was how the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, put it. And, he might have added, with a lot at stake.
The row between the Germans and their partners about Germany's net contribution to the EU is but a pale shadow of the battles that will be waged by member-states in the months ahead over every penny of the EU's budget for the first years of the millennium. No quarter will be given, as Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl made plain last night. "Europe cannot work," he warned, "unless the concerns of all were met. We are seeking fair treatment, no more, no less." Yet look at the treatment of a country like Ireland, he said, with its growth of over 5 per cent. The Irish will be hoping no one tells him it's twice that.
President Chirac was blunt, too; he was "obviously" opposed to Germany's case, he said, because France's contributions would have to go up. "It's not just entente cordiale in the EU," he said.
The deal is expected to be hammered out over three of the summits but the key questions, as Dr Kohl put it, "will not be resolved until the second day of the March summit - anything you hear before is wrong." That will not stop the chancellor, perhaps at his last such gathering, making electoral hay of the summit's inconclusive deliberations on the budget.
The other key theme of Cardiff, making real the principle that power should rest at the lowest level possible, will be broached at an informal meeting in Innsbruck in October. "A sustained effort is needed to bring the Union closer to people by making it more open, more understandable and more relevant to daily life," the 15 heads of state and government said in their final communique.
And the standard December summit in Vienna, only days before the launch of the single currency, has a huge agenda ranging from assessing member-states' success in reforming their labour markets, to appointing a new head for foreign and security policy in the EU, a "Mr CFSP".
The summit's final declaration reflects two processes at work - a determination to reinforce the role of national governments and parliaments in the Union by fleshing out the subsidiarity principle, while at the same time reinforcing the co-operative monitoring of each others' performances whether on jobs, the implementation of the broad economic guidelines, or implementation of single market legislation.
Indeed on the latter process the Commission president, Mr Jacques Santer, won significant backing for his insistence that in future member-states would have to accept explicit criticism of national performance - such criticism was filleted from a document prepared for the summit by finance ministers.
But the two processes are not mutually exclusive any more than the subsidiarity initiative should be presented as a Euro-sceptical attack on the Commission. "I have been at pains to point out this is not a Commission-bashing exercise," the British Prime Minister's spokesman repeated yesterday.
Indeed the balance between the institutions, a matter of crucial concern to the smaller states which regard the Commission as their protector, is unaffected by the likely changes to emerge from the special Innsbruck summit on subsidiarity - no treaty changes will be proposed.
The summit is likely to find ways of enhancing the role of national governments and parliaments in the decision-making process - whether that improves public perceptions of the Union remains to be seen. The result will be, officials hope, that the Commission will appear more as a facilitator of inter-state co-operation than as the European government that Euro-sceptics paint it.
For the Commission, part of the exercise is cultural - persuading ministers not to blame the Commission every time the Union does something they don't like - usually decisions are those of the ministers themselves. Responding to a question from this correspondent, Mr Santer's chef de cabinet, Mr Jim Cloos, pointedly recalled the unanimous decision of finance ministers in 1991 to abolish duty-free. Yet, he said, certain people were blaming the Commission. Touche.
Another change that Cardiff has made more likely is the splitting in two of the responsibilities of the General Affairs Council to give work on internal policies to a group of senior ministers, preferably, many say, deputy prime ministers. That will also raise the profile of European issues domestically as well as shifting power away from foreign ministers.
The emphasis on the EU as a complex system of co-operation between states plays well in London, whose presidency concludes, to the Blair government's relief, on an upbeat note. Or that's the way they were selling the absence of crisis at Cardiff.
Although the presidency has been largely one in which the Union marked time, with only one critical decision on the euro participants, the period will be seen by the British as above all accomplishing one key task - convincing the rest of the member-states that they are now not only team players but also singing off the same hymn sheet.
Even on the single currency. In his most enthusiastic endorsement of the euro which Britain has opted to remain outside until at least 2002, Mr Blair described it as a "turning point" for Europe which should help to protect European economies from the shock waves unleashed by the Asian crisis.
Britain would join if the economic case was right, he said, having just made that very case.
And more and more EU leaders are now quietly confident Britain will join as soon as politically possible, a prospect that particularly gladdens Irish hearts.
Germany's Minister for Europe, Mr Werner Hoyer, said the euro was going to be a "smashing success" and Britain would be in as soon as the debate had settled down.