BRUSSELS, Dec 21 (AFP) - In a breathless year full of drama and controversy, the European Union brought down the last remnants of the Iron Curtain in 2004 by embracing 10 new members drawn mainly from the former Soviet bloc.
But for anyone now hoping for a period of calm, 2005 promises to be just as action-packed as the EU begins the tough tasks of ratifying a historic constitution and launching accession talks with Turkey and Croatia.
And looming large in the year ahead will be fraught negotiations on the EU's next big spending round covering the period 2007-2013, overseen by a European Commission still finding its feet after taking office in November this year.
If past EU financial discussions are anything to go by, fireworks can be expected as the EU's biggest and richest members lead a charge to freeze spending, choking off lavish subsidies for the poorer and newer states.
After the bitter divisions of 2003 caused by the war in Iraq, the EU witnessed a rare and touching display of togetherness on May 1 with the entry of eight former Warsaw Pact members and two Mediterranean islands.
"A hundred thousand welcomes!" said the EU's then chairman, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, as the bloc toasted its expansion up to Russia's borders to take its total size to 450 million people, behind only China and India.
For a continent so long divided by the Cold War, the accession of the new members was indeed a historic occasion proving the worth of an integration project designed to entrench peace and security in Europe forever more.
But the "big bang" enlargement was not without its shadows. Cyprus remained a divided island on accession after its Greek-Cypriot portion rejected a UN reunification plan pushed vigorously by the older EU members.
The Turkish-Cypriots were left in the cold, despite their own enthusiastic backing for the plan, setting the scene for an even bigger headache at the end of the year when Turkey took centre-stage in Brussels.
After knocking on Europe's door for four decades, the Muslim-majority nation finally won a green light to launch membership talks from next October at a fraught summit of EU leaders last week.
But the door was not thrown wide open. A raft of tough conditions attached to Turkey's bid mean that its accession, if it comes, will be at least a decade away. And then only if Ankara first recognises the Greek-Cypriot government.
Cyprus aside, Turkey's EU bid faces innumerable technical hurdles when the negotiations begin next autumn.
The country is facing nothing less than the wholesale overhaul of its politics and economy if it is one day to enter the world's richest club of nations.
More immediately, the Turkey question may return to haunt the EU if it complicates referendums planned in a clutch of member states next year on the bloc's first constitution.
France, along with Germany the traditional driver of the European project, is the big question mark.
The prospect of Turkish entry into the EU, however far away, has focused public objections in countries such as France to the direction in which the bloc is heading.
France plans a referendum on the constitution in the first half of the year and if it rejects the document, the treaty will be effectively dead.
That would be a bitter pill to swallow for many in the EU after 2004 saw Ahern steer the delicate constitutional negotiations back on track after they collapsed over the vexed issue of national voting rights in an enlarged EU.
12/21/2004 13:37 GMT - AFP