Bottom-up is how the Regional Affairs Commissioner, Ms Monika Wulf-Mathies, described the EU's imaginative, little-reported but significant contribution to the Northern peace process.
The idea was to reach over the heads of squabbling politicians to see if ordinary people could be persuaded to work together at grassroots level. The tools were £400 million of European money over five years and, just as importantly, imaginative, new, democratic means of delivering it.
By making much of the money conditional on the creation of cross-community partnerships and by pumping funds into the non-governmental sector, the EU hoped to foster a climate which would support a political process conducted at another level.
The results are unquantifiable in terms of the peace process, but as the European Commission representative in Belfast, Mr Jim Dougall, says, 20,000 applications were made for funds and 11,000 grants approved. If each group involved only 20 people, that represents an engagement at some level of nearly a quarter of a million people, with projects aimed, at least in part, at reconciliation.
In the local partnership boards and other structures monitoring disbursement of the funds, Sinn Fein and Democratic Unionist Party representatives worked together, many meeting for the first time. Not one of the boards has split over politics, Mr Dougall said.
The Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation was the direct response of the Commission to the autumn 1994 ceasefire. Approved by the Essen summit at the request of then Commission President, Mr Jacques Delors, the programme was substantially shaped by, among others, EU Commissioners Mr Padraig Flynn and Ms Wulf-Mathies.
They resisted political pressure to route all the cash through traditional government structures, preferring to work closely with representatives of the MEPs on more radical mechanisms. And they made no bones about their willingness to stand over funding of potentially controversial projects, for example the rehabilitation of former political prisoners.
The breakdown of the IRA's ceasefire could have jeopardised the programme, but it didn't.
Apart from general statements about the EU providing a model of co-operation between previously warring parties, the Commission has avoided comment on the detail of the political process.
No doubt a peace deal will lead to calls for a continuation of special funding, but few in Brussels imagine funds will be as generous in these days of budget stringency. "We've done our bit," said one official last week.
Tapping into the Commission's expertise in institution-building might, however, be a more fruitful and realistic prospect.
And when history hands out the plaudits for the peace deal that has been awaited so long for, it might consider nominating the EU for Best Supporting Act (in a Non-Speaking Part).
