In a historic decision the European Commission this week judged 10 states ready to join the EU. If they are accepted as members over the next two months, the stage will be set for an EU of 25 states within two years - so long as Ireland ratifies the Nice Treaty in next Saturday's referendum.
Rarely has one small state held the future of an entire continent so much within the grasp of its democratic procedures.
A recurrent theme of the Nice referendum campaign is the effect the treaty will have on the respective position of small and large states in the EU.
Opponents say the treaty will strengthen the power of the large states in an enlarged EU. Its supporters point out that small states are systematically over-represented in its structures.
If enlargement proceeds, 19 small states will easily form the majority within the EU - with Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Poland making up the large ones. That balance would not change greatly even if Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey were to join over the next 10 years.
It was, therefore, not surprising that the larger states, confronted with this scenario, should have sought to protect their position in negotiating the Amsterdam and Nice treaties - and in the current jockeying for position at the Convention on the Future of Europe in preparation for the next treaty negotiation in 2003-4.
They successfully negotiated a reweighting of their votes and representation within the system in exchange for giving up one of their two commissionerships and agreeing to a system of strict rotation of commissioners when EU members goes over 27.
The smaller states agreed to this at Nice as part of a complex deal in which they accepted population-based arguments for greater equity. But nonetheless the smaller states remain systematically over-represented within the EU. Thus Ireland has one-quarter of Germany's voting power but only one-twentieth of its population. Overall, in an EU of 27 members, the large states with 70 per cent of the population will have 49 per cent of the votes, while the small ones, with 30 per cent of the population, will have 51 per cent.
Nice resolves only some of the political issues facing the EU. The most important ones, concerning the future range of its powers and the nature of democratic accountability within its structures, are being tackled in the Convention on the Future of Europe.
Broadly, there are three major currents within the convention as to the desirable shape of a future political system in Europe: a state-centric, inter-governmental one; a federalist one; and an "in-between" approach, which accepts elements from the other two but seeks to combine national powers and identities with effective supranationalism in a new, experimental way.
The Irish opponents of Nice, whether from the left or right, are all opposed to federalist plans for EU. They seem to plump invariably for a minimalist inter-governmental model of integration. Accordingly, they oppose qualified majority voting and lament the loss of the veto for 30 more areas of decision-making in Nice. Pressed on their vision of the EU's future, they tend to support a loose association of democratic states as an alternative to any of the three major currents on offer.
They thereby tend to miss the basic point of European integration as it has been constructed over the last 50 years. By pooling sovereignty, small states have multiplied their power and voice compared to the combination of large power hegemony and balance of power systems which previously characterised the European system. Treaties and supranational institutions have protected the smaller states as economic and political life has become more internationalised.
As a result, many of the smaller states have favoured greater integration to bind the larger ones into a system of law which mitigates their power. The argument remains strong as the EU faces key decisions in the next two years. It is worth bearing in mind that Ireland and other small states are rarely outvoted.
It is the large states which support the inter-governmental approach, because they have most power in that domain. The Commission and rule-governed methods protect the smaller ones from the arbitrary use of power. While few decisions actually divide small and large states, they do have separate interests concerning the basic rules of the system. That is why close attention must be paid to Nice and the convention.
Many critics of Nice assume the EU system is simply an arena of power in which the large states invariably get their way and can readily fashion the future according to their interests. That is a false portrayal, which misses the point of how the EU is tilted towards the smaller states.
From Ireland's point of view, most is to be gained by optimising influence in negotiations on Europe's future, working with other small states to maintain the EU's balance. To reject Nice in the name of a looser association of states would be effectively to opt out of them. It would throw the EU into crisis, marginalise Ireland and antagonise the candidate states.