In a controversial attempt to step up the fight against money laundering, EU leaders are expected today to back proposals requiring lawyers, accountants, auctioneers and estate agents to report suspicious cash transactions by their clients.
The move, which will extend an obligation already on bank officials, matches legislation which the Irish Government is about to put before the Dail and will be complemented at EU level with action to end bank secrecy and clamp down on tax havens.
The Finnish Prime Minister and President of the EU Council, Mr Paavo Lipponen, said: "We need to lift the secrecy that today hides suspicious transfers of funds."
The summit, called to kickstart European justice and home affairs co-operation, will also endorse the idea of a common EU asylum and immigration system.
It will ask the Commission within a year to prepare a detailed programme of proposals to put it into effect.
Leaders also backed enhanced co-operation between police forces and prosecuting and judicial authorities but stopped short of supporting an EU prosecutor to investigate fraud against the EU. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, warmly welcomed the proposals on money laundering, and he is understood to have urged fellow leaders to look at the possibility of changing the burden of proof in such cases to allow for seizure of unexplained assets, citing the success of the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau.
The emphasis was very much on enhanced "intergovernmental" co-operation between memberstates, with more integrationist projects being put on the backburner. The model was instead that of the legal relationship between England and Scotland, the British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said with one eye on the Euro-sceptics back home, insisting that no threat to national sovereignty or national legal systems was involved.
Mr Ahern's view that they should keep things simple, "set the bar clear and not too high", seems to have been the order of the day.
But the Commission will be given an important co-ordinating role in monitoring progress in the member-states across a wide range of justice issues, using the sort of scoreboard system that has been used to shame laggards in single market legislative programmes.
The challenge on asylum, several leaders said, was to end the practice of "asylum shopping" by creating common rules for the treatment of applicants and rigorously enforcing the Dublin Convention which requires them to be processed by the EU state which first receives them.
That will mean stepping up the transformation of the Eurodac convention on fingerprinting into a regulation, which some Irish sources say could be in place by the new year.
The leaders also backed the idea of a European refugee fund to share the financial cost of large migrant movements but agreed it would be constituted out of existing budgets and is thus unlikely to exceed £250 million.
Efforts will be made in the judicial arena to agree to recognise each other's court decisions and orders without the need for costly re-examination of cases.
And the Taoiseach made the case for easing access to the small claims courts for those abroad.
A systematic attempt will be made to inform travellers of their rights and to facilitate access to legal aid.
And while many of the ideas are like old familiar friends, having appeared on many a summit wishlist, leaders were insistent that Tampere will mark a turning point, with a new political determination to see the changes through, and the new legal means in the Amsterdam Treaty.
Over dinner last night leaders were expected to give broad approval to the Commission's recommendations to bring six more countries into accession talks from the Helsinki summit in December.
But they were also expected to reject the suggestion in a FrancoGerman letter that the role of the EU's new foreign and security policy supremo, Mr Javier Solana, should be upgraded at the expense of the rotating Presidency. The letter suggests that Mr Solana, who starts work on Monday, should be allowed to chair a key new political and security committee and be responsible for introducing foreign policy debates at ministerial metings.
The idea that Mr Solana should also be appointed head of the Western European Union to bring the two organisations closer - in the jargon "double-hatting" - has also been refloated, although a decision is not expected until December.
The meeting also had a few of the usual sideshows. Nothing, it seemed, would distract the British press corps, from the serious injustices being perpetrated against British beef by the French.