An ambitious and far-reaching agenda faces European Union leaders at their summit meeting in Helsinki today and tomorrow. It deals with a dramatic enlargement of the EU, changing its decision-making rules and representation and creating a military capability to handle regional crises. As always at such meetings, immediate issues intrude and may take the limelight - on this occasion the crisis in Chechnya and relations with Russia, and new rows over taxation and beef which particularly affect British interests.
The set-piece issues have been well aired in recent months and weeks and are expected to go through relatively unscathed by last minute negotiations, although in each case there are some matters that can be resolved only by the leaders themselves. Thus the new formula to invite five more states to join the fullscale accession negotiations, putting them together with the existing six states involved, will be passed. The one uncertainty concerns Turkey.
Most member-states are willing to include Turkey as a candidate along with the others, but bargaining continues at Helsinki on whether conditions affecting Greece or human rights will be applied. Beyond that, there is the EU's commitment to stabilisation and accession agreements with Balkan states following the Kosovo war. Adequate funding for their reconstruction and development has yet to be found in what will be a real test of that commitment.
The Helsinki summit will launch a new inter-governmental conference (IGC) to amend the treaties in order to make it easier to absorb these new members effectively. It looks almost certain that its remit will be narrow, concerning representation on the commission, the extension of majority voting and how to weight it between smaller and larger member-states. There is no consensus to broaden that agenda by including a constitution-type statement of rights or to distinguish between core principles requiring unanimous agreement to amend and operational ones that would be more easy to change - as advocated several months ago by the new Commission president, Mr Prodi. Most leaders feel there is not the political or popular will to take on such an ambitious task; it is likely to wait for a more propitious political moment in several years time.
The meeting will give the go-ahead for the creation of a 60,000-strong rapid-reaction force made up of troops from the member-states for peace-keeping or enforcing tasks in the European region. The consensus to do so has emerged extraordinarily rapidly in recent months, stimulated by the complete US predominance in the Kosovo operation. The mandate for such actions is strictly limited by existing treaties and it would be up to individual states whether to become involved. As the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, has underlined, this is not a European army but a capability to put existing commitments into operation. Nonetheless, the French presidency which takes over from the Portuguese one in July next and will steer the IGC to a conclusion, is pressing for the inclusion of more comprehensive defence commitments in the treaty.
A real test of the EU's new foreign policy and security roles will be how it responds at this summit to the Chechnya crisis. The utterly brutal and disproportionate Russian response to the crisis, specifically the ultimatum that the inhabitants of Grozny should leave the city tomorrow or be killed, must be altogether condemned.