Inching across the Erszebet bridge in Budapest during the evening rush hour, frustration is eased by the loveliness of the vista. The Danube shimmers darkly; the splendid Parliament buildings, the castle, the statue of St Gellert and the many other Habsburgera monuments overlooking the city are lit with a golden glow.
All around, shiny late-model cars creep forward on their way across to the comfortable suburbs of the hilly Buda side. It is a scene both romantic and crisply modern, and it reeks of the consumer culture and corporate rush taking place in Dublin, London, Sydney and a hundred other cities across the world.
The Budapest rush-hour scene shows a city demonstrably part of a new integrated European Union - and membership is dear to the hearts of Hungary's political class. But Budapest is very different from the rest of this flat, landlocked country, and impressions here can be misleading. The economy has been booming, but many of Hungary's 10 million people have missed out on the benefits. These - the poorest and those dependent on agriculture - are the people with most misgivings about EU membership.
But the dissenters are very much in the minority. Surveys regularly show about two-thirds support for EU accession, and there is a cross-party consensus in the national parliament. In September the six main parties, led by the Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, issued a statement of joint intent to facilitate the move.
After the Nice treaty, the dream of EU membership has become concrete for this former communist country - or, as the civil servant in charge of integration, Dr Peter Gottfried, says, "there is no brake on the process. The end of the tunnel is in sight."
"Harom" is the Hungarian word frequently heard in discussions on integration. It means "three" and 2003 is now the magic date. The Nice treaty said, in one of its clearer passages, that the EU was prepared to welcome those applicants ready at the end of 2002 for participation in 2003. Although formalising a commitment made at a previous EU summit in Helsinki, the confirmation was welcome news to people who have gone through austerity programmes and huge legislative and environmental effort to reach EU standards.
It is important for applicant states, of whom Hungary is at the top of the list, to be well in by the time elections to the European Parliament are held in 2004 - especially if the parliament gains more clout.
Hungary has pursued the Eurogoal with determination since 1995. Aided by huge foreign investment, mostly from Germany and the US, its economy has been flourishing, with growth averaging over 5 per cent annually. An austerity programme introduced in the late 1990s made the striving particularly painful for the average person not lucky enough to be employed by one of the many multinationals with Hungarian operations. (Just this week Ireland lost out on a 1,000-jobs project to Hungary, the first time that such a skilled operation has opted for eastern Europe in preference to western.)
Despite the buzz of new shopping malls and all those cars streaming across the Danube, it was salutary to note that a fairly modest meal for two in a brasserie opposite Imre Steindl's magnificent neo-Gothic Parliament, at an equivalent of £25 Irish, represented a week's salary for a worker on or near the minimum wage - and that group includes civil servants and many public employees. Legislation forcing the minimum wage up from 26,000 Hungarian forints (about £90) a month to 40,000 HuF is to be implemented from next month. The only substantial opposition to this 50 per cent increase, says Dr Andres Iontai of the Hungarian Academy of World Economics, came from trade unions fearing job losses because of the cost to employers.
Apart from the economy and labour movements, the two other big challenges for the Hungarians regarding the EU are the environment and human rights. In both cases the authorities are refreshingly frank about past shortcomings. It is pointed out, though not laboured, that Hungary's geography leaves it very much exposed. Smack in the middle of the region, its Transcarpathian Plain is bordered by Russia and the Ukraine (hardly paragons of environmental responsibility), with Romania to the east and Serbia to the south. "Environment is not a difficult negotiating issue because our aims are all the same [across the EU]," says Dr Gottfried, who heads the integration task force in the Hungarian Department of Foreign Affairs. Last year a pollution of the Tisza, the country's second biggest river, outside its borders led to severe contamination of water supplies in many areas.
The human rights problem mainly concerns the Roma, a minority of between 500,000 and 800,000, which has a near 80 per cent unemployment rate and all the attendant social ills. Although mostly settled communities, the Roma are the victims of racism by other Hungarians. As one Australian-Hungarian who has lived in Budapest for six years told me, "the Roma are to Hungary what the aborigines are to Australia".