EU ENLARGEMENT: The deal is done - now the leaders of the candidate countries must sell the EU membership case to their citizens, writes Denis Stauntonin Copenhagen
Close to 11 p.m. on Friday, when the deal was done in Copenhagen to allow the EU to take in 10 new member-states, EU leaders and their counterparts from the candidate countries celebrated with a glass of champagne.
Yet among officials from the candidate countries, the mood was strangely subdued.
"I expected them to be hugging each other or crying but most of them just sat there, their bags already packed, waiting to go back to work," said an official from an EU member-state.
Back in their capitals, politicians and officials from the candidate countries are indeed preparing to go to work today on the task of persuading their citizens to vote for EU membership.
All 10 countries will hold referendums next year, starting with Hungary on April 12th. Confident of victory in the most emphatically pro-EU country of the 10, Hungary's government wants to secure a popular mandate before it goes to Athens later in April to sign the ratification treaty.
Hungary's likely approval of EU membership should boost the chances of successful referendums in Slovakia and the Czech Republic in June. The result in the Czech Republic is far from certain, however, and former prime minister Mr Vaclav Klaus reacted sourly to the Copenhagen summit by accusing the Prague government of agreeing a poor deal for Czech farmers and businessmen in order to save face.
Poland's President Mr Aleksander Kwasniewski declared that the Copenhagen summit was more important than the conferences of Yalta and Potsdam which divided Europe at the end of the second World War. The agreement in Copenhagen came on the 21st anniversary of the imposition of martial law in Poland, highlighting how far Warsaw has come since it threw off communist tyranny.
Yet some Poles are unhappy with the entry terms and many people, especially in the countryside, remain unconvinced of the merits of joining the EU.
Poland's referendum on June 8th will be closely fought and the government and its allies will have to work hard to ensure that the largest and most important candidate country votes to join the EU.
The candidate country with the lowest support for EU membership is Malta, where the opposition Labour party has promised to negotiate a special position for the country outside the EU if it wins next year's general election.
Support for enlargement in the present member-states is uncertain but referendums are unlikely to be necessary in the 15 EU countries. Most will ratify the accession treaties in parliament and few hiccups are likely unless conservatives use the prospect of Turkey's future EU membership to drum up opposition.
The EU has told Turkey that, if Ankara fulfils the political conditions for EU membership by December 2004, it can start accession talks without delay. Turkey's new government will have to work hard to improve its human rights record within the next two years, ending the widespread practice of torture and extending full rights to minorities.
In liberalising society, the moderate Islamist government must tread carefully to avoid antagonising the armed forces. The army sees EU membership as the surest way to maintain Turkey's secular identity, but the generals are reluctant to give more rights to minorities, especially the Kurds who make up 20 per cent of Turkey's population.
Meanwhile, the EU and the candidate countries will face the challenge in the first half of next year of working on the Convention on the Future of Europe to produce a constitutional treaty for the EU. The most important issues, such as the division of power between Brussels and the member-states, are only now being addressed.
From January, the convention will be discussing draft texts of articles for the treaty, and its president, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, hopes to finish work next summer. After that a short Intergovernmental Conference will negotiate on the basis of the convention's draft text and agree a new treaty either during Italy's EU presidency in late 2003 or during Ireland's in early 2004.
Last week's decision in Copenhagen heralds a great period of transformation for the EU but in Brussels this week it will be business as usual. Fisheries ministers arrive in the city today for four days of argument about fish quotas which, if precedent is any guide, will not end until Friday morning.
Making history is exhilarating but most of the business of the EU remains unglamorous but important, like balancing the interests of today's fishermen with the need to safeguard the future of fishing.