BRUSSELS - The summit of Europe's big three powers is being viewed with a mixture of anticipation and foreboding as heralding a new form of leadership for the expanding European Union. The reality may be less far-reaching.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair all have good reasons for needing the February 18 Berlin meeting.

All three are domestically weakened, face awkward foreign policy challenges and want to get the EU moving again after a period of economic stagnation and political setbacks.

They have recently joined forces in initiatives to boost European defence integration and persuade Iran to accept tougher inspections of its nuclear programme.

There is no shortage of other pressing problems for them to address - reviving a push for economic reform to boost Europe's limp growth, breaking the deadlock on a stalled EU constitution, healing transatlantic rifts over Iraq and seeking a successor to Romano Prodi at the head of the European Commission.

They are preparing a joint call for an acceleration of economic reform efforts ahead of next month's regular summit on economic policy, which officials say breaks little new ground.

But diplomats and analysts say the big three may not be able to agree among themselves on some of these issues, let alone deliver the agreement of other key partners.

Italy and Spain were quick to warn against any attempt to create an inner "directoire" to run Europe - especially one that does not include them.

Speaking on the eve of the summit, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi launched the strongest attack to date on what he portrayed as efforts by the three to create a "directorate" for the EU.

No 'directoire'

"Europe doesn't need any directorate. It's just a big mess," said Berlusconi, whose country is one of four European countries in the G7 group of leading industrial nations along with Germany, France and Britain.

"This is my opinion which is completely shared by other European countries, with the exception of the three countries involved," Berlusconi told a news conference in Rome.

"Directorate" or "directoire" - the term for the five directors who ran France after the post-revolutionary Terror in the 1790s - are becoming the dirty words of EU politics.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, whose country has just ended an unsuccessful six months in the EU presidency, said the emergence of such a leadership trio "is a worry for those who believe Europe is a mechanism for power-sharing, not a mechanism for the concentration of a hard core of power."

But some other countries welcome the new "trilateralism", at least as preferable to Franco-German hegemony.

"Of course, it's a novelty that Blair is joining the duo who meet often," Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller said in an interview. "It can only be beneficial. Blair's presence brings a new point of view. It brings the transatlantic option."

German EU policy expert Ulrike Guerot said the Berlin summit signalled a welcome recognition that the Franco-German axis was no longer powerful enough to drive an enlarged EU of 25 nations.

The traditional theory was that since Paris and Berlin often started on opposite sides of EU debates - north versus south, agrarian versus industrial, protectionist versus free market, Europeanist versus Atlanticist - when they reconciled their differences, others would follow.

Enter the British

But officials in both capitals now intone the mantra that Franco-German agreement is "necessary, but not sufficient."

"It has become a locomotive without wagons," Guerot said. "France and Germany were seen as riding roughshod over the small countries, not respecting EU budget deficit rules themselves and trying to force acceding states to choose between Europe and the US."

Enter the British - free marketeering, pro-American, inter-governmental and presumed to have influence with countries such as Spain and Poland that resent Franco-German dominance.

"Clearly all three leaders are worried about how the EU can take decisions after enlargement," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London.

"Chirac and Schroeder know they can't drive a common foreign and security policy without Britain, and Blair thinks they've all got to overcome the old Europe/new Europe divide," he said.

Grant said Blair might be willing to help coax Poland and Spain towards accepting a deal on member states' voting rights that would unblock the stalled EU constitution after May.

The three might also be able to agree on ways to adapt the EU's budget deficit rules, which might in the long term make it less unattractive for Britain to join the euro, he argued.

But on Iraq and on some areas of European integration, like tax harmonization, farm subsidies or calls for a European public prosecutor, Blair differs strongly from the others. And mistrust between Blair and Chirac runs deep after two years of conflict.

"People shouldn't exaggerate what we three can achieve," a French official said. "But they should accept that we can meet in small groups, because Europe simply won't work if everything can only be discussed by all 25."

(Agencies via Xinhua)