The jury is still out on who will represent Ireland at the important EU summit

These EU summits have the appearance of a society of mutual admiration or a high-level political club. To the casual observer, summit meetings appear like a grand political circus, with front-line police all wailing sirens and escorting fleets of shiny black sedans at high speed through streets closed to citizens whose traffic problems are worsening.

Ideally, the 30 participants – 27 heads of state and government of the member states together with the President of the Commission, the President of the Council and the Foreign Commissioner – supposedly shape the future of Europe.

In practice, these meetings are often about crisis management. This is particularly true of the past 15 years, ranging from the financial crash of 2008 to a migration crisis in 2015 and the aftermath of Brexit, which some said threatened the demise of the EU in 2016/2017 the two years of the Covid-19 lockdown, and then, without anyone taking a breath, to the nightmare of war in Europe.

The quirky world of EU summit meetings has come a long way since Charles de Gaulle of France convened the first meeting of heads of state and government in Paris in 1961. This was labeled a “fireside chat,” and similar gatherings were occasionally held in the years that followed.

Another French President, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, gave the format a boost in 1974 when it was put on a more regular footing. The first of these was hosted by then-Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave in Dublin in 1975. But these gatherings remained informal with the so-called “European Council,” the noble term for leaders gathering at a summit, and eventually received legal recognition in the 1986 Single European Act, creating border-free markets, and the Maastricht Treaty of In 1992 there was a single currency.

The idea then slowly picked up speed in the EU Treaty of Nice in 2002 and in the summit resolutions of other heads of state and government based on it. The thing that structured these summits came with the Lisbon Treaty of 2009.

This created a new post of EU Council President, a permanent chair of the summit to drive the agenda. Regular Summits are now held four times a year over two days, and sometimes there is a special session on a specific topic.

This new structure also changed the practice of each head of state being accompanied by his foreign minister. It also stipulated that a leader could only be replaced by another leader. So forget about Tánaiste joining Leo Varadkar or Secretary of State Simon Coveney at the big table later this week.

Observers have noted that this “club vibe” is encouraged by being “just a leader” and happening up to six times a year. Personal relationships develop that can be helpful – or the opposite.

These relationships are strengthened through side meetings between the various political groups. Mr Martin has been a regular participant in these sidebars and has anchored Fianna Fáil in the third largest grouping, the Liberals, which includes President Macron of France.

This week’s summit is huge and the Taoiseach is keen to attend. It’s about the EU’s response to embattled Ukraine, EU funding for arms and supplies, Brussels’ response to the refugee crisis and EU plans to help national governments deal with the energy crisis.

President Biden will be there on Thursday after meeting the 29 other leaders of the NATO military alliance. Then he goes on to Poland, where two-thirds of the refugees from Ukraine now live.

But back to Ireland’s choice if Mr Martin can’t make it out of Washington’s Covid isolation to reach Brussels. Well, there were times when it almost certainly would have been an automatic election in Britain.

Mr Coveney’s proposal by summit chairman and former Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel was rejected. The jury is still out and the limelight could still fall on another neutral country like Austria or Malta. Mr Martin’s officials have not given up on his getting out of purdah on time.