Dublin to pile on pressure as it takes EU helm Activists protest against budget cuts in a demonstration in Dublin earlier this month If European leaders expect Enda Kenny to set aside his awkward disputes with the international creditors funding Dublin's €67.5bn bailout during his six months at the helm of the EU's rotating presidency, the Irish prime minister has a message: he is not going to go quiet. Ireland next year could become the first of the eurozone's five bailout countries to emerge from a rescue programme if all goes according to schedule. But Dublin has been arguing for months that unless it gets some relief from Brussels on €64bn in bank debt still sitting on its sovereign books, even a country that has played by tough EU-imposed austerity rules may not make it. "You have to have the principle established here that those who do most to help themselves are encouraged and given assistance and support from the institutions of Europe," said Mr Kenny in a thinly-veiled swipe at the increasingly generous terms being offered to Greece, which unlike Ireland has repeatedly missed its bailout targets. "It will be a big year for Ireland but also a big year from the union, because it can prove that a country that does work with the rules can emerge here," Mr Kenny added. But that requires the support from Europe to actually get us across that line. It may appear a delicate line for Mr Kenny to walk - strong-arming his European counterparts for debt relief at the same time he serves as impartial arbiter of the EU's day-to-day business. But over the course of a 45-minute interview, Mr Kenny is not delicate. He insists that his government will push the burgeoning list of unfinished EU business - next steps towards a eurozone banking union, finalising laws giving Brussels more authority over national taxing and spending policies, a deal on a new seven-year EU budget - through the EU's Byzantine legislative process. But Mr Kenny is monomaniacal when it comes to the deal he really wants to strike, a long-promised change in how it pays off sovereign debts incurred when the bust Irish banking system was bailed out four years ago. Because of the fact that the country that I lead politically was the only one that had a policy imposed on it from Brussels and from Frankfurt at that time - that a bank would not be allowed to fail - we've had to shoulder a unique burden from any other country in Europe. In some respects, the rotating EU presidency Ireland takes over in January is a relic of a bygone era. Before the bloc's new treaties came into effect three years ago, the presidency's prime minister chaired EU summits and its foreign minister represented the 27-member bloc internationally. Those tasks have since been taken over by permanent, Brussels-based figures. But the presidency still plays an outsized role in striking the back-room legislative deals that make the EU work, and how national leaders play on that international stage can shape their image indelibly. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark's charismatic prime minister, has seen her name mentioned as a future European Commission president after this year's Danish presidency untangled some of the EU's most intractable problems, including a decades-long dispute over a single EU patent and complex capital rules for European banks. Conversely, Demetris Christofias, Cyprus" mercurial president, found himself the focus on unwanted international criticism when negotiations over his country's bailout faltered in the midst of Nicosia's turn at the presidency, which ends next week. The stakes for Mr Kenny are higher than most. According to the terms of Ireland's bailout, Dublin is to be gradually weaned off its bailout financing over the course of the year and must raise €6.6bn in the markets before going cold turkey in November, when the three-year bailout concludes. And while Ireland's economy is performing better than any other bailout countries, its fiscal situation is still dire: next year debt levels will reach a high of 121 per cent of economic output and its budget deficit will be 7.5 per cent, both among the worst in the eurozone. There are also signs of mounting political unrest at home. The chair of Mr Kenny's main coalition partner resigned last week over social welfare cuts in the government's latest austerity budget, and more defections are possible. The death of a pregnant woman who was refused an abortion at an Irish hospital has become politically divisive and could also overshadow the EU presidency. In the interview, Mr Kenny is hardly blind to the problems he faces domestically. Indeed, he appears insistent on highlighting them - once again in an effort to convince Europe that Ireland's fate is touch-and-go without help from Brussels. "While the outside world may look at Ireland and say, "You are doing very well, you are moving in the right direction," I have to tell them at all times that our economy is very fragile and this is a very challenging time for our people," he said. A break on the bank debt for Ireland makes it so much easier for the country to emerge from the programme. It is a win-win situation for Europe and for Ireland - that is what it is.