The new left-wing government in Warsaw hopes to take Poland into the EU by 2004 but there are rough seas ahead before that haven is reached.
Poles are still coming to terms with the obliteration in the recent election of the Solidarity party which has gone abruptly from running the country to failing to win even a single seat in the new parliament.
Poland's once vaunted Eagle Economy is faltering, just like Ireland's Celtic Tiger which Warsaw admires as a model for how EU membership can transform a country dominated by more powerful neighbours.
Ireland's rejection of the Nice Treaty has puzzled Poles but this is seen as a problem for Ireland and the EU to sort out while Poland concentrates on the final push in its negotiations. There is some concern that Poland is falling behind the nine other countries aiming at accession in 2004.
For Poland's leaders, past and present, it is inconceivable that their country will not be accepted into the EU. One of the first actions of the new government has been to make concessions on the demand of its predecessor for a lengthy transition period before other EU citizens can buy agricultural land. There are fears that German neighbours will use the opportunity to buy up land on the western border which was formerly part of Germany.
In another concession, Poland has responded to German and Austrian fears of being flooded with immigrants from the east, saying it will accept a transition period before Polish citizens are granted freedom to work in EU countries.
Already a full member of NATO, Poland sees itself as playing the role of intermediary between an enlarged EU and its eastern neighbours of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. But the EU expects Poland rigorously to control its eastern borders with these three countries even at the risk of creating a new Iron Curtain.
The EU is already providing finance for the virtual sealing of Poland's eastern borders. Recently, I was among a group on a visit organised by the Warsaw-based Batory Foundation, standing under one of the old watchtowers on the Polish-Ukraine border dating from the communist era. Nowadays the electrified fence is reinforced with the latest electronic monitoring equipment, including night vision, to detect illegal traffic.
Polish negotiators accept that they have no choice but to agree to the Schengen rules whereby the external borders are made as impermeable as possible as the price for free movement across internal borders. For the new Foreign Minister, Mr Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, the virtual sealing of the border with neighbours like Ukraine and Belarus is not meant to send them a "negative message" about future co-operation.
Was he concerned that Polish entry into the EU could be delayed by second thoughts about the costs of enlargement?
The minister observed that the "information campaign" which Brussels had hoped would increase enthusiasm for European integration as well as enlargement had not exactly delivered. "Strong determination is needed by all of us" to revive such enthusiasm, he acknowledged.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski, back from a visit to Moscow, welcomed our group in the former Radziwill Palace, now the Polish White House. He expressed confidence that the Polish electorate would vote for EU entry when negotiations ended but conceded that the recent election had shown a "Eurosceptical attitude among some populist groups". He hoped that the "pro-European generation will make a stronger statement than in the general election" when the referendum occurs in 2003.
The President, a minister for sport in a former communist government, said that there would be a "vacuum" in Central Europe if Poland does not join the EU. He is not unduly concerned that the ruling SLD social democrats are in coalition with the Peasant Party, which is known to have reservations about how the negotiations are going with the EU over the Common Agricultural Policy and the right of non-nationals to purchase land.
Also in the parliament are two new parties opposed to joining the EU. These are the populist Self Defence, which represents the more militant farmers, and the League of Polish Families which wants stronger protection for Catholic values.
Our group went from the President's office to visit two contrasting farms in south-eastern Poland. The first was a typical small farm not unlike hundreds throughout Ireland: about 15 acres with 11 cows, one of which was giving birth to a calf, as we talked to the farmer in his yard. He was dubious about the benefits of joining the EU.
It was the story of the bachelor and the future bride in the closet: when she emerged she was ugly and had a hump. The EU could turn out like that. Most of the small farmers were anti-EU, he believed. They needed more information.
The second farmer was in a different league with about 800 acres, greenhouses, an orchard and 150 cows. He exuded confidence about the future. It was the EU which should be afraid of Polish agriculture rather than the other way round because labour was so much cheaper. Dairy farms like his would benefit most, so he was in favour of EU entry.
Negotiations with the EU are reaching a critical stage as the new government promises to make membership a "top priority". With its dependence on the parliamentary support of the Peasants' Party, the SLD, led by the Prime Minister, Mr Lezek Miller, will have to get the terms of entry as attractive for the farming community as possible even if agriculture represents only 4 per cent of GDP. But 40 per cent of the population live outside the cities and large towns.
The economic scene after the boom years of the last decade is now sluggish with growth slowing down to under 2 per cent and unemployment at 16 per cent and rising. The budgetary deficit is also causing problems.
The latest report of the EU Commission on the progress of the enlargement negotiations commended Poland on recent reforms, including privatisation and the single market. It expressed concern, however, about corruption, especially in the judicial system, and the decline in economic growth.
Whether Ireland's rejection of the Treaty of Nice can block the entry of Poland into the EU because of legal niceties may divide the experts, but politically it is hard to see how a country with such a tragic history of oppression from its Russian and Germanic neighbours can now be denied its proper European vocation.