Dedication, skill and luck of the Irish bears fruit

At midnight tonight, Ireland ends one of the most successful EU presidencies ever, greatly enhancing the country’s reputation, writes Europe Correspondent Ann Cahill

THE sixth Irish Presidency of the European Union ends at midnight tonight and is being hailed as one of the most successful ever.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, with a mixture of luck, political ability and a good civil service, expertly managed the EU's main decision-making body during the past six months.

It was good fortune to have the union's largest ever enlargement fall into Ireland's term and the Day of Welcomes in Dublin on May 1 was a great success.

However, the Taoiseach's major accomplishment was delivering the new constitution.

At the annual spring summit in Brussels he told his fellow EU leaders he believed it would be possible to get agreement, provided they showed the necessary political will.

By carefully choreographing a sense of optimism and fostering flexibility, he built up a momentum and expectation of an agreement.

Ireland's well-known ability to find compromises came to the fore as the Constitution team under Bobby McDonough isolated the contentious issues and found solutions as Mr Ahern horse traded with his fellow leaders.

It appeared embarrassingly simple in the end with agreement reached well before the end of the Irish presidency.

Mr Ahern then got down to the next task: steering the successful search for a next European Commission President. Agreement on the new man was confirmed during the EU-US summit in Dublin.

The Irish had the good luck to have an Irishman as President of the European Parliament during their term. Pat Cox had earned a reputation as an excellent administrator with an ability to get work done.

This came to the fore during the first three and a half month's of Ireland's presidency when a mammoth 80 pieces of legislation were concluded before the parliament rose for elections. This was a fifth of all concluded legislation during the five year term.

This was all the more unusual given the Fianna Fáil government could not depend on support from a large group in the Parliament as their six MEPs were part of a disparate group, the UEN. Here, the other Irish MEPs, Europe Minister Dick Roche and Mr Cox proved invaluable.

The legislation concluded included implementation of a common immigration and asylum system and measures to fight international crime and terrorism.

Neither tranches of legislation were without controversy, attracting strong criticism from human rights groups and are likely to trigger challenges in the European Court.

Work on the global stage, especially for a civil service as small as Ireland's, took on major dimensions. Foreign Minister Brian Cowen had already won plaudits for his work in minimising the split caused by Iraq within the EU by using the UN as the final arbiter.

He was unable to make as much progress as he would have liked in the Middle East, but during the Presidency, the US was already engaged in finding a way back to some kind of multi-lateralism.

The EU-Russia summit in Moscow last month was a major success, with the Irish suggesting a diplomatic solution to highlighting EU concerns for human rights abuses in Chechnya normally a threat to these summits.

They were also credited with helping to resolve last minute problems on the agreement Russia needs to join the World Trade Organisation, finalising it in time for the summit. Consequently, President Vladimir Putin promised to agree to the largely EU sponsored Kyoto protocol on climate change.