A meeting with Russia's President, Mr Vladimir Putin, is likely to be the most newsworthy event of the EU summit in Stockholm, which starts on Friday. In keeping with its national image, Sweden's presidency has avoided display and bombast in favour of solid, painstaking work on a few key issues.
This week's summit is, above all, a stock-taking session after last year's meeting of EU leaders in Lisbon, when they promised to make the EU the most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. To pursue this goal, the leaders promised to liberalise markets and improve the skills of Europe's workforce while simplifying regulations that businesses find cumbersome.
For the EU's enthusiastic free-marketeers - such as Ireland, Britain and Spain - the Stockholm agenda is evidence that their voice is being heard despite the EU's preponderance of more left-wing governments. With the pragmatic, cautious Swedes in the driving seat, advocates of liberalisation hope Stockholm will deliver a strong signal that Europe is serious about reforming its economy.
One issue the leaders are determined to resolve is a dispute over proposals to improve regulation of the internal market in financial services. Under the proposals put forward in the report for finance ministers by Baron Alexandre Lamfalussy, the detailed regulation of financial markets will be delegated to a committee of junior ministers or high-ranking officials of the EU member-states. If there is a change in the markets or new products, this committee will be able to adopt a new regulation to deal with it quickly.
The leaders may have to make concessions to win the approval of the European Parliament, whose members want to retain a role in scrutinising new laws.
Ireland's other priorities at the summit include measures to encourage more women to start businesses and a proposal to create a business-led task force to identify the skill needs of the knowledge economy and recommend EU action to fulfil them.
The Government supports a Commission proposal to reach early agreement on an EU-wide patent and a European litigation system to command the confidence of European industry.
