It wasn't quite a May 2004, when the EU admitted 10 new states to great fanfares in Dublin and throughout the union, but the accession of Romania and Bulgaria this week marked an important and welcome milestone in the union's development and the reunification of the European continent divided by the Cold War.
The celebrations in Sofia and Bucharest saw a real sense of excitement and fulfilment, even if in the capitals of Old Europe a more jaded, cynical tone prevails - a welcome, yes, but not exactly with open arms, as Dublin demonstrated when in October it followed the UK in insisting the two acceding countries' workers will still require work permits for at least two years.
The enlargement extends the borders of the EU to the Black Sea. Twenty two million Romanians and eight million Bulgarians bring the population to some 489 million, embracing largely Orthodox populations, significant numbers of Turks and Roma, and for the first time introducing a Cyrillic alphabet (Bulgarian) to the EU's 32 official languages.
Both countries are at the bottom of the EU's wealth league with average wages of €300 and €230 a month respectively, although growth rates of 7 and 6 per cent, partly fuelled by the accession process and €44 billion in promised EU funds, should improve living standards. And the reality that three million of their citizens are already working in other member states, legally and illegally, suggests their economies may have already seen the mass labour exodus that many fear.
In both capitals politicians wisely did their best during the celebrations to lower expectations that accession will be a panacea - their success, they argued, will owe more to their own efforts than Brussels' magic wand. Wise counsel, though probably lost in the cacophony of fireworks. For one thing the union has imposed special safeguards to prevent backtracking on promises, so access to structural funding will not be easy.
Politically both countries are likely to reinforce the "friends of the US" in the union, both are committed to US bases on the Black Sea, and Romania sees itself as a local power, a potential bridge politically between a strategically important region and the EU. But the two countries, twinned by chance in the accession process, are not one and resent being seen as such. They have been rivals for centuries, and Bulgaria's sense of itself, a small state much put-upon by larger neighbours historically, is much more akin to Ireland's than its neighbour's. It is to be hoped, in particular, that member-status will help its diplomatic battle with Tripoli to free nurses unjustly jailed for contaminating Libyans with Aids.
The accession, however, is also an important reminder of unfinished business. An unwieldy institutional structure is clearly ill-able to cope with a union of 27. The new German presidency has pledged to revive discussions on how to ratify the Nice Treaty. That challenge is not easy but is now all the more urgent.