Europe was Thursday counting down the hours to the historic expansion of the EU with 10 new members set to sweep into the bloc, ending decades of division forged in war and entrenched by political dogma.
At the stroke of midnight Saturday Central European Time (2200 GMT Friday), the EU will embark on its most ambitious exercise since it was founded in 1957 out of the trauma of World War II as a force for trade and political partnership.
On Saturday Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will swell the ranks of the European Union family to 25.
European Commission chief Romano Prodi hailed the event as an "astonishing" climax to the process of re-uniting Europe 15 years after the Berlin Wall came crashing down, dragging with it the Soviet Union and the Communist ideology with which Moscow had held its satellite European states in check.
"May 1, 2004 is an historic day for Europe, when we welcome into the EU family 10 new member countries and 75 million new EU citizens," he said in Brussels ahead of the bloc's big bang. "Five decades after our great project of European integration began, the divisions of the Cold War are gone - once and for all.
"Europeans are celebrating the fact that they are no longer kept apart by ideological barriers. We share the same destiny and we are stronger when we act together," said Prodi.
The EU's expansion will climax at midnight Friday with celebrations across the continent, including a huge Day of Welcomes in Ireland, which is currently hosting the bloc's rotating presidency.
"The Union is taking a giant's step. It is opening up new horizons," French President Jacques Chirac told a press conference in Paris on Thursday.
"With its 450 million inhabitants, the EU must become an economic power of the first rank, in which growth and investment will create a new dynamic for employment. It is a process in which everyone will be a winner," he said.
Chirac was seeking to reassure a sceptical French public after opinion polls showed people were concerned about the effects of an expanded EU on employment and social welfare - as well as on French national identity.
With other nations such as Romania and Bulgaria already knocking at the EU's door and amid talk that future EU admissions could swell membership to as high as 33, Chirac warned he felt the conditions were not quite right for Turkey to join. "I believe that Turkey has a European vocation. But the conditions for its entry are not fulfilled today," he said.
One of the biggest items on the agenda of diplomats and EU Commission officials is whether to start accession talks with Turkey. They are set to decide at a December summit.
The commission is also presented with the thorny problem of a divided Cyprus entering the union, after Greek Cypriots rejected a "last-chance" plan to end the Mediterranean island's 30-year division.
Thus when Greek Cypriots party into the EU on Saturday, their Turkish Cypriot compatriots will be left out in the cold watching the fireworks from the other side of a UN-patrolled demarcation line.
Despite the celebrations planned in the new member countries, the expansion has been greeted with apathy in the existing 15 EU members with very few events set to mark the occasion.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern is to meet fellow leaders of the new look EU on Saturday afternoon before a welcome ceremony hosted by President Mary McAleese in Dublin's vast Phoenix Park.
Prodi will on Friday attend a ceremony in the Italian town of Gorizia/Nova Gorica, which was divided by World War II and straddles the border with Slovenia. "The old Europe represents the killing fields. The new Europe is an act of creative reconciliation," according to European Parliament president Pat Cox.
There is, however, a little apathy and a lot of disquiet about the enlargement project that has been so long in the making.
The central source of tension is the yawning economic disparity between east and west. The gross domestic product per head of the biggest newcomer, Poland, is 10 times less than tiny Luxembourg's.
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