The special EU summit ended with pledges that movement to a single European currency will be accompanied by more vigorous programmes of action against unemployment.
EU member-states have agreed to draft national action plans to show how they will meet agreed new EU guidelines for the reform of their labour markets. This is intended to provide a social balance to the rigorous economic policy rules that go with monetary union.
The EU's first jobs summit was described by the Luxembourg President of the European Council, Mr Jean-Claude Junker, as a "new start for Europe", and he hoped that "those who believed that Europe had lost sight of them will take heart from it".
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said the summit had been very useful and would show "that Europe was united in fighting unemployment".
The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, described the summit as a turning point that showed Europe had a new focus on the people's priorities. "The fight against unemployment would be the foundation stone on which we build a people's Europe, " he claimed.
A delighted Social Affairs Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, the architect of the approach agreed by the leaders, said the summit was "a triumph and a major milestone in the construction of a social Europe".
He said 95 per cent of the contents of the Commission's proposals had been accepted.
The 19 guidelines range from places on training schemes for young people and the long-term unemployed to removing the burden on small business to improving child-care provisions.
Progress in each of the member-states will be monitored annually from next year by heads of government in a process that will place internal and external pressures on governments to honour their undertakings.
The guidelines themselves will be reviewed annually, a new form of social "benchmarking" in which the high achievers in tackling unemployment will continually set new standards for the rest.
Although the leaders gave unanimous support to the monitoring process, modelled on the principles agreed at the Amsterdam summit, the meeting did see a tussle between those such as the Swedes, Danes and French who wanted guidelines made as explicit as possible with, in the words of one French diplomat, "as many figures as possible", and on the other hand the Spanish who wanted all quantification out of the conclusions document.
In the end the Spanish, one in five of whose workforce is unemployed, won a derogation allowing them to phase in training over more than the five-year timetable set for the rest.
The Germans also persuaded leaders to amend the target for training of the unemployed. But the change was described by Mr Flynn as purely textual.
And the French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, said it was "a step towards forging a new dimension for Europe that we are accused of neglecting".
But amid the hyperbole, Mr Junker said the summit represented only a beginning of the process. The message was clear: the hard part is still to come.
