The change of mood will be dramatic in Brussels this weekend as the EU presidency passes from France, after a turbulent six months, to the cool stewardship of Sweden. Few EU diplomats have a kind word to say about the French presidency, which was characterised by noisy rows, stand-offs and hurt feelings all round.
The Treaty agreed at Nice earlier this month has been dismissed as weak, muddled and a setback for the process of European integration. Ms Nicole Fontaine, the President of the European Parliament, yesterday described the Treaty as "an enormous missed opportunity".
French negotiators upset almost all their EU partners by bullying the smaller member-states, whispering poisonously about the Germans and embarrassing the British over the relationship between NATO and the new EU Rapid Reaction Force. One senior Irish official, who is renowned in European circles for the coolness of his negotiating style, left a meeting fuming after a particularly outrageous display of French arrogance.
The Nice Treaty's critics complain that it does not extend majority voting to enough policy areas and that the new system of reweighting votes and calculating a "qualified majority" will actually make it harder to take decisions. Others are concerned about the shift in influence towards bigger member-states.
Whatever its deficiencies, the Treaty clears the way for the EU to accept new members, mostly from central and eastern Europe. It is this process of enlargement, which could lead to an EU of more than 500 million people, that Sweden has placed at the centre of its presidency agenda. An EU member since 1995, Sweden is, like Ireland, militarily non-aligned and like Britain and Denmark, is not a member of Economic and Monetary Union.
But for reasons of history and geography, it is more committed to enlargement than any other member-state and, although only 37 per cent of Swedes are happy that their country became a member of the EU five years ago, 62 per cent support enlargement.
The Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Goeran Persson, hopes to accelerate negotiations with the candidate countries during the next six months. In practical terms, this will mean concluding agreements on the adoption of EU laws and on possible transitional arrangements to protect economic interests in both the old and the new member-states.
"The Baltic coast was only a grey outline. Something unpleasant and frightening - the Soviet Union. Now we can put a definitive end to the division of Europe into East and West," Mr Persson said recently.
Mr Persson also hopes to reassure Russia that EU enlargement will not represent a threat to its interests and will start negotiations with Moscow on the future of Kaliningrad, a Russian port city on the Baltic that will be surrounded by EU member-states after enlargement.
At a meeting of EU leaders in Stockholm in March, the Swedish presidency will focus on two other issues - improving environmental co-operation and boosting employment.