While the rest of Europe is drawing closer together, the Balkans have been falling apart.
Macedonia somehow managed to stay clear of the ethnic conflict which followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But now this tiny nation-state of two million souls may also be caught up in the vortex of ethnic hatreds and resentment.
It would be a pity. Skopje is a pleasant city, no Paris or Amsterdam but a friendly place where lingering over coffee in the afternoon is an art form.
The surge of rebellion by ethnic Albanians close to the Kosovo border may have been temporarily suppressed, but it can safely be said that the paramilitaries in the mountains have not gone away.
Imran, an ethnic Albanian who was born in Skopje but whose roots are in the mountain villages, is quite clear about the issues at stake.
We drive through the bourgeois sector of the city, full of handsome dwellings built on a gentle slope.
Imran keeps his bitterness in check as he explains that these are the homes of the former leaders and administrators of the old communist regime.
To draw him out, I suggest that communists should not be rich. "No," he says, "that is the worker, not the party leader or administrator." He points to an unshaven, middle-aged man in dungarees standing on the sidewalk: "Look at the worker."
Imran was never attracted to communism, which he describes as a "brutal" system. Nor does he seek to be part of a greater Kosovo or Albania. He was born in Macedonia and all he genuinely wants is due recognition for himself and his community in a pluralist society.
We cruise through moderately prosperous streets such as you would find in the average provincial town in Ireland. Then we turn into the Albanian quarter. Conditions are not as bad as for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but they are identifiably Third World.
We pass the school his son attends each day. Imran points to the corrugated iron used for some of the walls and roofs. "Africa!" he says contemptuously.
A group of ethnic Albanian housewives hurry past, their heads covered in the Muslim fashion. "Our women are not emancipated," he says. It is not the fault of religion, but the fact that his people are deprived.
The Albanian community admires the guerrillas, he says, but implies it is for more than their methods. He believes something must be done to redress the inequality which divides the capital city of Skopje as surely as the Liffey divides Dublin.
There was a totally different perspective from Jordan Miloshevski, now in his 70s and an economist by training who held several important positions under the old Tito regime.
At the height of the Cold War he was the Yugoslav trade commissioner in the American Midwest and he proudly shows me his certificate as an honorary citizen of Minneapolis, which was presented to him by the mayor.
Now a private citizen, he is nostalgic for the old days when Yugoslavia seemed to have overcome the ethnic hatreds of the past under the slogan "Brotherhood and Unity".
Those days are gone, but he is hopeful that the European Union can create the conditions for renewed amity among the Balkan peoples. "It is a good and progressive movement to make a Europe with no borders and to have the target of a better standard of living."
But he believes the pace is too fast, and the transition from the old collectivist society to the new market economy should have been more measured.
The incipient conflict with the Albanian community makes him very sad. He pulls out a newspaper page with pictures of the current members of parliament and points to the high proportion of Albanian faces.
He maintains the current conflict is being stirred up by "terrorists", not ordinary members of the Albanian community. The minority community wants state funding for a university where courses are taught in the Albanian language.
But Mr Miloshevski argues that, with the current high unemployment rate, the Macedonian state cannot afford such a concession.
He is concerned about the future: "I am really worried, I am afraid and I don't know the outcome."
He has good reason to be worried. The leading Albanian politician in Macedonia, Mr Arben Xhaferi, described the pressure he was under in an interview with the New York Times last week: "It is possible to go to bed a patriot and wake up a traitor."