WORLD VIEW / Paul Gillespie: The rush of events during Ireland's EU presidency has eased now that the function has been handed over to the Netherlands for the next six months, and the international political season quietens down for the summer.
The last month alone has been packed full, as the Taoiseach, his Ministers and officials guided the constitutional treaty negotiations to a conclusion in Brussels, oversaw the appointment of a successor to Romano Prodi as Commission president, hosted a summit meeting with President Bush and another with Japan, as well as dealing with the EU's running business.
It is intriguing to speculate about the longer-term effects of playing such a role, both at home and abroad.
The Irish presidency has been widely and deservedly praised for its good judgment, efficiency and energy on behalf of the EU as a whole as well as on Ireland's behalf. Smaller states have usually performed it more disinterestedly. They do not have power to throw around, as large ones do, and have to devote relatively more administrative and political resources to it.
The new treaty, if it is ratified, provides for a president of the European Council who would be an internationally visible representative of the EU over a 2½-year term, alongside the five-year Commission president and a new position of foreign minister.
In selecting them, due acknowledgment must be given to the geographical and demographic diversity of the EU and its member-states. But the treaty creates a more formalised three-team system at any one time. Each country would chair all configurations of the Council (except foreign affairs) for six months. So much of the system will be preserved, allowing new groupings of the member-states to emerge.
This should help maintain a positive feature of the presidency system - its capacity to encourage identification between national and EU roles and give smaller states a regular opportunity to represent the larger entity in world affairs, and thus to influence them more.
While Bertie Ahern suffered from the same anti-incumbent trend as other leaders in the European elections, it would be wrong to conclude that his domestic authority was reduced by the EU role.
Now that the speculation on whether he would become president of the Commission is over, he returns to domestic politics strengthened within his party and with his national reputation and profile higher as a result of conducting the EU job so well. It will be up to him to make the best of that political boost, which was acknowledged by opposition leaders this week. They know that Ireland Inc has benefited as a result.
Mr Ahern believes it will be much easier to sell the new treaty in a referendum precisely because of its constitutional aspect. It spells out fundamental values and objectives and protects core national interests as he sees them.
He must presume that Ireland's identification with the treaty negotiations will improve voters' knowledge and approval of it. Polling evidence would be useful in evaluating this; but it would be foolish to assume a sustained identification by voters if the subject matter is ignored or not campaigned about vigorously, even if a referendum is put off for two years.
There is a feedback between international reputation and domestic politics. It is especially so for a small state such as Ireland, which has topped the globalisation list published by Foreign Policy magazine for the last three years. To have been seen conducting such a demanding role so effectively affects perceptions of Ireland in all sorts of ways, not only in Europe but around a world in which the EU has now a more visible and active presence. This is a long-term, if diffuse, benefit.
Ireland has influenced the EU during these six months as well as represented it.
This can be seen in a number of the presidency's foreign policy priorities, including on Africa, HIV/AIDS, the Middle East, transatlantic relations, EU enlargement and on the EU's growing relationship with the United Nations. It fell to the presidency to develop a policy of "effective multilateralism" with a strengthened UN at its core, as laid down at last December's summit in Brussels.
The Government's summary report on the presidency spells this out (it is available on its excellent website www.eu2004.ie which has had 50 million hits and will continue to be available). It lists under this heading the agreement on an EU contribution to Kofi Annan's policy panel on threats and challenges more effective international action on gross violation of human rights; and closer UN co-operation on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
An EU-UN agreement on crisis management will now have greater capacity to undertake rapid- response operations at the request of the UN (the current situation in Darfur/Sudan looks like a case study of such possible future interventions).
Ireland's position within the EU has shifted during the course of this presidency. Arising from the Nice experience, from shared British and Irish preferences for neo-liberal policies and hostility to majority voting on taxation and foreign policy, and from a normalisation of British-Irish relations through the Northern Ireland peace process, there was a growing perception on the Continent that Ireland had changed its political location in the EU.
It had moved closer to Britain and to Atlanticist positions and further away from its traditional integrationist role.
Brokering the treaty and Commission presidency agreements between the Franco-German and British-Italian-Nordic blocs has put Ireland back more in the mainstream, positioned rather like the Netherlands, Finland or Hungary.
This confirms a longer trend whereby European integration has gone with the grain of Irish nationalism, unlike England's (but not unlike Scotland and Wales). By taking the main leadership roles in the presidency Ahern and Cowen emphasised Fianna Fáil's social liberal credentials over the neo-liberal Progressive Democrat ones, feeding into the post-election debate on socio-economic policy.