Can Ireland heal EU divisions?
By Robin Oakley
CNN European Political Editor
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Ahern, left, and UK counterpart Blair are no strangers to tough talking.
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(CNN) -- Ireland has taken over the six-month revolving European Union presidency from Italy, placing a country of 4 million inhabitants in charge of a body which will expand to 450 million people while Prime Minister Bertie Ahern is in the chair.
On May 1 the EU will expand from 15 to 25 nations. It is a tough challenge. In December, amid great bitterness and after nearly two years' work, EU heads failed to agree a new constitution needed to operate an enlarged union without decision deadlock.
Ahern and his foreign minister, Brian Cowen, are in listening mood, seeking to gauge the willingness of the other 24 to reach a compromise on the constitution and to report back to an EU summit in March on the prospects of reviving a deal.
If they judge the time is not right, resolution may be postponed until the Dutch take over the presidency in July -- or even later.
But hope has not yet been abandoned. EU veterans recall how another small country, Denmark, conducted one of the most successful presidencies in recent years under their Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In 2002 he secured the initial agreement on EU enlargement.
Optimists point out that Ahern and Cowen are experienced negotiators whose skills have been honed alongside UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in efforts to move along the Northern Ireland peace process.
Small countries tend to bring fewer tensions with them to the presidency and Ireland was agnostic in the December arguments on the key question of EU voting rights.
Ahern has made it clear he will resist any of the threatened efforts by France and Germany, uttered after the December summit, to forge ahead with an "inner core" of countries, leading to a two-tier Europe.
Hands across the ocean
The major ambition of the Irish presidency lies on the economic front. Ahern wants to inject new life into the EU's 2000 Lisbon agreement which aimed to make it the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.
That needs progress on liberalizing financial services, increased job mobility and infrastructure investment and reform of Europe's ailing pension systems.
Ahern also wants an improvement in EU-U.S. relations after the bitterness over the Iraq war. With many U.S. citizens of Irish descent, his country may be uniquely placed to achieve that ambition.
But there are other challenges for the Irish presidency.
It has to drive forward further agreement on EU asylum and immigration policies which have been a cause of friction.
Agreement has to be forged by June on a new president for the European Commission and interest needs to be stimulated in the European Parliament elections that month if an embarrassingly low turnout is to be avoided.
Also in the next six months, new squabbles will begin over setting the EU budget for the 2007-2013 period.
The danger is that battle lines forged in the row over the EU constitution, particularly those between Poland and Spain on one side and France and Germany on the other, are likely to be perpetuated, with the big countries seeking economic revenge on those who opposed them over voting rights.
