On May 2nd, the EU will have a clutch of new neighbours: some good, some bad and some quite ugly. Kieran Cooke reports on countries about to border the EU that have grown, politically or economically, since the collapse of communism.
Nataly Hariton, bright eyes flashing under a big bear skin hat, stands chanting pro-EU slogans at a demonstration in the main square in Chisinau, the capital of the small state of Moldova. It is bitterly cold: people stamp their feet on the freshly fallen snow.
"Our dream is to join Europe," says Ms Hariton, an 18-year-old student of modern languages at the city's university. "We have had enough of this government and its communism. We want to look west, not east."
Along the length of what will be the new borders of the soon to be enlarged EU there are millions who share Ms Hariton's aspirations, with the same message heard in Sofia, in Belgrade, in Kiev, in Tirana. Yet for many, those ambitions of joining the EU look unlikely to be achieved in the near or even distant future. Moldova, a country squeezed like a piece of salami between Romania to the west and Ukraine in the east, is just one example of the complexities facing the EU as it widens its boundaries.
A client state of the old Soviet Union since the second World War, Moldova gained independence in 1991. Robbed of the captive Russian market for its wines and with hefty subventions from Moscow in sharp decline, Moldova's economy headed downhill fast. With per capita annual incomes in the landlocked country of 4.5 million officially put at only $420, the country is now by far the poorest in Europe.
In 2001 President Vladimir Veronin, a communist of the old school, won a landslide election victory - mainly due to the votes of Moldova's older generation, nostalgic for the security and fixed pensions of Soviet times.
"We will be a Cuba at the heart of Europe," announced Mr Veronin soon after coming to office. Yet Mr Veronin and his fellow communists have learned to temper their language.
There is growing opposition to what is seen as the replacement of the old political control from Moscow by a new form of Russian economic colonialism, with powerful Russian interests taking over Moldova's wineries and other key industries.
While the older generation still hankers after the old secure Soviet ways, an increasingly vocal, younger age group is calling for Moldova's membership of both the EU and NATO. Mr Veronin has responded with a dual, somewhat paradoxical, foreign policy: in the short term, he says, the country will remain firmly in the eastern camp, allied to the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In the longer term, Moldova's government aspires to EU membership. The majority of Moldovans are Romanian-speaking and look to their western neighbours as their natural allies. At present Moldovans can travel freely to Romania; Romania, part of a second tier of EU-aspirant countries, is hoping to join the EU in 2007.
EU diplomats in Moldova are concerned about the country becoming a transit point for more immigration from the east. Already thousands of Moldovans, mostly the young, leave to work in Europe each year. Among them are many young women, trafficked into the sex trade in the Balkans or forced to work in brothels in Rome, Paris and London.
"It's ironic," says Ala Mindicanu, an opposition politician. "It's only remittances from these people working mostly illegally in Europe, forced to leave because the state failed them, that keeps Moldova afloat. Without the $300m they send home each year, we would be bankrupt."
Yet the possibility of these illegals ever being able to work legitimately within the EU in the near future is very unlikely. In the aftermath of last month's EU constitutional debacle, Brussels has taken on the character of a harassed, slightly demented hotelier trying to accommodate, on one hand, the regular guests and, on the other, a host of demanding new arrivals. Given this confused state of affairs, the reception clerks at the EU are not exactly interested in those knocking on the outer door.
"The EU likes to talk about further enlargement almost as if it is a never ending process," says a Moldova-based US diplomat. "However, it's clear Brussels is never going to countenance what we call the BUM countries - Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova - becoming part of the Brussels club." While the governments of Belarus and Ukraine might be more circumspect about EU membership than Moldova, a broad swathe of countries and their peoples on what will be the EU's new borders see their future firmly in the west.
Albania, in the southern Balkans, has, like Moldova, enormous economic and social problems. From the end of the second World War to the early 1990s, it was virtually locked away from the outside world under the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha. Now it too aspires to EU membership, in the medium- and not long-term.
"Our number one aim, the goal of our foreign policy, is membership of the European Union," says Ilhir Meta, Albania's foreign minister until a recent reshuffle. Albania has been struggling to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU, viewed as a first step along the path to eventual membership.
The EU has made it clear that before any such agreements can be made, Albania - and several other countries in the Balkans - have to tackle many issues. Top of the list for Tirana is crime. Estimates vary but it's calculated that up to 50 per cent of Albania's economy is associated with various illegal activities. The country is considered to be one of the main centres for criminal gangs who organise people and drugs trafficking throughout Europe.
Mr Chris Patten, the EU's Commissioner for External Affairs, has described organised crime as a cancer eating away at the body of Europe. No country should be considered for EU membership unless, he says, "we are satisfied they are working to rid their countries of this evil". However, those with long experience in former communist countries such as Moldova and Albania - countries which are now relatively free but at the very bottom of Europe's economic league - say there is a paradox in all this.
Communism might have brought hardship and fear to many societies in eastern Europe and the Balkans, yet it also brought education. A bus driver in Moldova might also be a highly-trained civil engineer; a street vendor in Tirana might be a marine biologist.
In Chisinau or Tirana it is not uncommon for young people to speak two or three languages. All these people have aspirations. They are impatient; they have more freedom than their parents generation ever had. The irony is that while they are now allowed to leave their countries, the outside world - the EU included - tries to stop them entering.
"It is only natural that our young people seek a better life and more opportunities," says Fatos Nano, Albania's prime minister. "While we want them to stay here and rebuild our country, the EU cannot always close the door on them. That will lead to problems for everybody."
Recent years have shown that no matter how tight the EU's immigration regime, the poor or repressed, or those simply seeking a more prosperous life, will find ways to enter. During the past 13 years, over one million Albanians - about a quarter of the population - have left the country, a large proportion of them to work illegally in the EU.
Standing in the snow, waving an EU flag, Moldovan Ms Nataly Hariton and her fellow students are determined their future will be in Europe. "Does the EU want to drive us back into the grip of Moscow? Europe cannot put up its barricades and turn its back on us."