OPINION: Most welcome EU enlargement and want the labour market opened, writes Denis Staunton
Tomorrow's accession of 10 new member-states will be marked not only by parties but by protests staged by activists opposed to the political direction of the EU.
Gardaí are preparing for large and possibly violent protests in Dublin, although there is little evidence that many activists from abroad are planning to take part or that any violence is planned.
The demonstrations that have accompanied many EU summits in recent years have been characterised in some sections of the press as the work of a violent rabble.
The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, dismissed the protesters as "an anarchists' travelling circus that goes from summit to summit with the sole purpose of causing as much mayhem as possible".
Some demonstrators are violent, but the overwhelming majority are not, and the organisers of tomorrow's event are engaged in a lively internal debate over how best to prevent trouble.
Carlo Giuliani, the only person to die during a political demonstration in Europe in recent years, was killed by police at a protest against a Group of Eight meeting in Genoa in 2001.
The most striking feature of most demonstrations at EU meetings is their diversity, embracing traditional socialists, anarchists, environmentalists, pacifists, immigrant rights campaigners and Christian groups.
Most are internationalist in outlook, and over the past two or three years an informal, pan-European political network has emerged and has begun to formulate a coherent critique of the EU.
Much of the criticism focuses on the EU's economic policies, which protesters believe serve the interests of business at the expense of citizens. The committee that organised last year's European Social Forum in Paris called for opposition to the "central" place of the market and trading in the European structure.
"It is a matter of affirming not only the necessity of a democratic Europe for citizens and people but also to demonstrate that it is possible," it said.
Protesters complain that business lobbies such as the European Round Table of Industrialists have had too great an influence on EU policies such as the Lisbon Agenda, which calls for greater liberalisation of markets and more flexible work practices.
They want the EU's trade policy to take greater account of the needs of poorer countries and oppose the practice of the Article 133 Committee, which agrees the EU's negotiating position in world trade talks, of meeting in secret.
Most of tomorrow's protesters in Dublin welcome EU enlargement and want the labour market in western member-states to be opened to workers from the east without delay.
Many argue, however, that enlargement will simply serve to expand what they call "Fortress Europe", which seeks to keep non-EU immigrants out by introducing ever-stricter measures against illegal immigration and makes political asylum more elusive.
Criticism of the EU's security strategy is more widespread in Ireland than in most member-states, although many activists elsewhere in Europe would like the EU's foreign and security policy to be more independent of the United States.
Opposition to new policing and intelligence measures introduced in the name of the fight against terrorism is gathering force.
Many traditional pro-Europeans are bewildered by the new movements criticising the EU, which has produced many advances in terms of social protection, minority rights and other issues important to the political left.
Few would dispute, however, that many of the questions being raised by protesters go to the heart of the EU's future direction and highlight democratic deficiencies within the European political structure.
Unlike some mainstream political movements, many of the groups protesting tomorrow are engaging seriously with the EU as a political phenomenon.
Indeed, far from being enemies of the European idea, they may be in the process of building a new democratic and political life across European borders that the EU's founding fathers would welcome as a dream come true.