Today's EU summit in the Swedish city of Gothenburg was meant to send a strong signal to countries in central and eastern Europe that they are on track to join the Union. Ireland's rejection of the Nice Treaty means that EU leaders will have a harder job to reassure the candidate countries that there will be no delay to enlargement.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, will attempt today to explain to other EU leaders why Ireland voted against the treaty and will plead for time before the Government formulates requests for any special declarations to take account of Ireland's concerns. But he will repeat the assurance given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, earlier this week that the Government will not seek to renegotiate any part of the Nice Treaty.
Leaders of the candidate countries, who are pressing the Government to hold a second referendum on Nice sooner rather than later, will join EU leaders for lunch tomorrow.
The Taoiseach will revisit the scene of an earlier battle with the EU when the leaders will approve this year's Broad Economic Policy Guidelines. Although the guidelines repeat February's reprimand over last year's budget, the Taoiseach is likely to approve them.
Apart from enlargement, the big theme of the Gothenburg summit will be the environment. The Swedish presidency wants "ecologically, socially and economically sustainable development" to be taken into account in all EU decisions.
The leaders will discuss detailed proposals on climate, public health, natural resources and transport. But there is little chance that they will accept immediately ambitious proposals by the Commission to create environmental targets.
Last week's referendum result will add a sense of urgency to the leaders' discussion of the future of Europe and the debate on how to make its decision-making more democratic. This morning's discussion will probably be confined, however, to a report on the debate in the 15 member-states so far.
The leaders are expected to decide on the location of the new European Food Authority to safeguard food standards throughout the EU.
The leaders will hear a report from the EU's foreign policy supremo, Mr Javier Solana, about his visit to Macedonia yesterday. The EU and NATO want Albanian rebels to accept an amnesty for Macedonian rebels, a ceasefire and NATO supervision of the disarming and demobilisation of the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army. But NATO has rejected a request from the Macedonian government for help in disarming the rebels.
And Mr Solana will also brief the meeting on the EU's enhanced role in promoting peace in the Middle East.
Mark Brennock adds: Last night Mr Ahern said he had planned the Irish referendum date so he could come to the summit with the treaty approved. "I wanted to give the whole process of Nice a lift," he said.
"Nice was only about enlargement . . . it was never about anything else. Nobody in Europe sees it as about anything else. We have a dilemma now: The Irish people voted against it."