Chirac gets his way … this time

Date: 11/04/1996

The Irish have decided not to call Jacques Chirac's bluff.

Unlike the Italians, who stuck to their guns over the launch date for the Intergovernmental Conference in Turin despite the French president's protestations that he would not be able to make it, Ireland has decided to accommodate the Elysée diary and move the date of the Dublin Euro summit in December by one week.

Chirac says he will be attending a rival summit on 6 and 7 December, the dates originally scheduled for the Dublin event.

Chirac is certainly booked in to attend a Franco-African gathering in Burkina Faso on the days in question, but remember all the fuss he made in Madrid about the Turin event? It would be impossible to attend, declared Chirac, as he would be “on the other side of the world”.

The Italians were unmoved and a swift head count at the start of the Turin gathering confirmed that the president had managed to get there after all.

Nevertheless, the Dublin summit will now take place on 13 and 14 December to avoid a new version of the French empty chair.