Will Dublin pick up the EU pieces ahead of enlargement?

Ireland now holds the rotating EU Presidency. A major challenge will be to oversee EU enlargement on the 1st of May. When another 10 countries join up. Dublin will also have to set about repairing some of the political damage from Europe's failure to reach agreement on its much-promoted constitution. The constitutional negotiations collapsed in December over the voting rights in the enlarged EU with Poland arguing to keep the power it gained in the Nice Treaty three years ago. For a look at Ireland's EU priorities Kerry Skyring spoke to Irish televisions Europe expert Shaun Whelan

Photo: European Commission

"They will try and breathe life back into it but they're playing down all expectations. The Irish Prime Minister, somewhat pessimistically I think from having talked to him about securing agreement within these six months, he's talking about the back-end of this year, October or so before they can have a go at this again. And Valery Giscard d'Estaing, he was saying before the Christmas break, look there's only one chance to get this right, they can't have another failure of this meeting, they can only come back to it and close the deal when they know they can get a deal and that means lots of back channel diplomacy."

What about the divisions that came out of the Italian Presidency and I'm speaking about particularly Poland and Germany, but also France was involved, over the constitution and the issue of voting power?

"Well this is one of the big intractable issues but the Irish Prime Minister takes the view that it's not the only problem. It's been portrayed as the only problem and it is certainly the most "hard-ball" issue, but the Irish Prime Minister takes the view that there are other issues out there to do with how far people want to go in deepening Europe, opening up more areas to the European Union system. So he thinks there are quite a lot of big issues there and people are not necessarily ready to take the steps forward that are necessary to seal the deal that has been offered by Giscard's constitutional convention."

Ireland gets to oversee the big bang of European enlargement in May when the ten new countries come in - it's being followed particularly closely here in Central Europe - what's planned? How do they intend to project this to the European public, this historic enlargement?

"Well it is the historic enlargement. It is the most important thing during this semester. All these rows that are going on about constitutions and budgets, in a few years time it's all going to be forgotten about. In a hundred years time people are still going to look back and say the first of May 2004, that was the day, this historic date when all the past divisions of Europe were erased and just talking to Günther Verheugen, the Enlargement Commissioner, he was comparing it to some of the big peace treaties in Europe, like the Treaty of Westphalia, or The Congress of Vienna, the Versaille Treaty, but saying this is the first time now that you don't have any compulsion, you don't have any war, oppression in Europe, that it is purely a peaceful arrangement between all the peoples. So they want to mark that in Ireland as best they can. They're planning a 24-hour celebration of the enlargement in towns and villages right across Ireland North and South. They'll be holding a series of events like street parties with a musical theme and that will tie in with big festivities that are being planned for Warsaw and Berlin for the 1st. of May as well. So they're planning a big welcome party I suppose you could call it for our friends in Central and Eastern Europe."