"Historic", a word whose constant use has debased its meaning, was not enough for Germany's Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl. This was, he told journalists, the most important meeting since the war.
It's a fair point, even if the reality was obscured by the fact that, eight years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the summit's formal commitment to enlargement without parallel in the EU's history was not exactly unexpected.
Nevertheless this was the point at which the two great European camps of the Cold War formally set in train their merger.
"For a man of my generation, this is really the end of the second World War," the Polish Foreign Minister, Mr Bromislaw Geremek, said after the summit. "Luxembourg has cleared the way for the reunification of Europe."
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said the summit "has firmly endorsed the view that the 10 applicant countries from central and eastern Europe (CEECs) and Cyprus are part of the European nation".
The summit declaration speaks of "the dawn of a new era, firmly putting an end to the divisions of the past . . . a pledge of future stability and prosperity."
Yet it will be some years before the first wave of applicants are in the EU as the Slovenian Foreign Minister, Mr Boris Frlec, acknowledged. "2004 is probably realistic," he conceded but claimed that Slovenia, the most advanced of the applicants, would then be ready to enter the Union and the single currency simultaneously.
The summit also saw the end of the Blair European honeymoon. British sources were saying the meeting demonstrated his willingness to fight as robustly as any Tory for Britain's interests. EU debate did not have to spell conflict and isolation, Mr Blair insisted, claiming that his approach had been one of "co-operation and partnership".
But there were others who took a different view, although usually in private. The French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, who had a bruising encounter with Mr Blair on Thursday night at a meeting of socialist leaders, is understood to have told a Swedish diplomat that they needed to give the British leader "a bloody nose" over the Euro-X.
The Italian Prime Minister, Mr Romano Prodi, on the other hand, was impressed, praising Mr Blair's "extraordinary spirit of collaboration and strong personal contribution" which he said was promising for the future. That "future" is imminent, with the start of the British Presidency only days away.
In endorsing the Commission's strategy of starting formal talks at Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) level only with five of the CEECs - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia - and Cyprus, the leaders also went out of their way to establish a more all-embracing enlargement process involving all 10, plus Cyprus and even Turkey, if the latter is prepared to meet the conditions.
"That process will take place at different times for individual countries," Mr Blair told a press conference. "But all are involved and there is hope for all of them. No one is shut out of this process at all."
Mr Blair insisted that instead of complaining that they were being left behind, the non-IGC countries should recognise that the process of discussion with the initial five will accelerate their own accession.
The IGC talks are wrapped in an envelope of other measures designed to prove to those in the slower track that they are still very much on board - a new panEuropean Conference for all applicants, reinforced ministerial dialogue with all applicants, and new pre-accession agreements with aid more sharply focused on requirements of membership.
Those CEECs who would not be in the fast track - Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia - would also be involved in detailed "screening". This is a page by page examination of how they correspond legislatively and administratively with the 80,000 pages of text describing the acquis communautaire, the full corpus of Union law and practices to which all new members must sign up.
Annual Commission reports on their performance would assess whether they should be allowed to join the fast track.
The meeting also issued anodyne declarations on issues like justice co-operation and food safety.
For the Luxembourgers the summit must be measured as a success, achieving the agreement on enlargement and Euro-X. But there were some diplomatic grumbles that the usually sure-footed Prime Minister, Mr Jean- Claude Juncker, had made agreement on Turkey more difficult with his refreshingly candid public comments on "torturers".
Nor did his positions as both Prime Minister and Minister for Finance or as an effective sometime honest broker between France and Germany give him the leverage to prevent the unseemly row over the Euro-X.
But, minor caveats notwithstanding, Mr Juncker's reputation is as a most an effective operator on the EU stage and will have been reinforced during the Presidency, not least by the success of the employment summit. Another Luxembourg Commission President in waiting?
Editorial comment: page 17
