There is Turkey, and then Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Malta, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, then Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, and Serbia, then Russia, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan . . .
When and where will it all end, this onward march of Europe? I mean of the European Union, of course, but, such is the branding success of our brilliant project that for many, both within and without, it is merely Europe, and my use of the complete EU term could be construed as pedantic.
And yet it is a preposterous and dangerous arrogance that has us talking about a great European power, Poland, joining or rejoining Europe, or asking how Europe will cope with the Balkans.
We shivered uncomfortably when Mikhail Gorbachev spoke in 1989 of our "common European home", tolerated it because of what he was doing to Russia, but in our hearts it was still "them and us".
We forget that for many of our partners in the European Union - Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece - democracy and good neighbourliness is only a feature of the latter part of the century, and even more recent for some. Standing beside a mass grave in Kosovo a few weeks ago I had to pinch myself to remember that this is our history too.
The idea of Europe has become detached from the reality of Europe - alienated, as Marx would have said. The challenge of the next decades is to unify it.
The Helsinki EU summit paved the way for six more countries to join the first six already in accession negotiations, and Turkey as a candidate. So along with Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus, potential members now include Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Malta.
And then there's Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, members of the European Economic Area, with trading rights on a par with EU members, but no political say. How long before they, too, join the queue?
Then there's Kosovo, already effectively an EU protectorate. And Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania - all being promised that if they behave well the prize can be theirs too. Even Serbia eventually. All of them sit in an official waiting room - the Stability Council.
That's 24 potential new members likely to be banging on the door in the next decade and admitted over the next 20 years. Then there's Russia, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan . . .
The Helsinki summit has said that the EU must be prepared to take the first members in by the end of 2002, though it will probably not happen for another year in reality. Already in the last year we have seen a major refocusing of EU attention and all the instruments at its disposal on the objective of preparing for that day.
Agriculture, which gobbles up half the budget, has been restructured as an instrument for compensating current EU farmers for lost income, as prices move closer to world market levels. No hostages to fortune there - "how can we compensate Polish farmers for losses they haven't incurred?" the negotiators ask. But the failure of the World Trade Organisation talks in Seattle may give Irish farmers respite from further dairy sector reform.
Funding for the central and eastern Europeans has been expanded and reorganised to specifically target accession challenges.
The magnitude of our millennial challenge is enormous. The first 10 years of transition from communism told a story, with a few signal exceptions, of economic decline and volatility. The average real GDP level in the transition region as a whole (including Russia and the Ukraine) is still only two-thirds of its 1989 level.
But increasing regional divergence was another feature of the past decade; star performer Poland has already surpassed its 1989 level by about 20 per cent, whereas Bulgaria's output is scarcely two-thirds of what it was 10 years ago.
The Economist Intelligence Unit's 10-year growth forecasts for nine major economies in Eastern Europe suggest, however, that average performance in the region over the next decade will be far better. Average growth for the nine main transition countries is projected to approach four per cent.
The willingness of the EU to embrace genuinely European responsibilities has also been behind the development of its military capacity. By 2003, Helsinki decided, the Union will be able to independently deploy a self-sustaining multinational force of up to 60,000 troops in crisis situations in fellow European countries.
That reorientation of defence priorities and continuing troop commitments to Bosnia and Kosovo are likely to require major reassessments of structures and spending in Europe's armies.
In order to prepare institutionally for enlargement the EU has launched another Inter-Governmental Conference to forestall potential decision-making grid-locks before they arise. The agenda, ostensibly, will be limited to issues like reducing to one the number of commissioners per country, re-weighting votes in the Council in favour of the larger countries, and some extension of majority voting.
But that's not going nearly far enough for the President of the Commission, Romano Prodi, who will try to persuade leaders also to include radical measures to make future treaty-changing easier.
The critical parallel challenge of making the Union more acceptable to its own citizens has also begun with the purging of one Commission and installation of Mr Prodi's New Model Army - with some old familiar faces - pledged to root out bad old ways.
Yet the problem is far deeper than improving bureaucratic practices.
The EU is faced with a similar challenge to many national polities in the growing cynicism and alienation of citizens from many aspects of society. The European elections in June marked a new low: the abstainers won the day - for the first time in a European election more people abstained than voted - and in the UK they represented a staggering 73 per cent of the electorate.
Polls in Ireland reflect this reality - although the electorate is strongly positive about the EU, in fact the most enthusiastic in the Union, it has a low sense of ownership of the institutions. Europe is apart from us, external, an entity with which we negotiate rather than control.
Pervasive cynicism about politics has also undermined the willingness to accept the authority of government-sponsored scientists. So the challenge faced by Ireland's new Commissioner for Food Safety, David Byrne, of re-establishing trust between citizens and institutions is a mirror image of the challenge faced by the Union's institutions as a whole.
The dangerous irony is that as Europe begins its great reconciliation with its historical essence, and the EU genuinely becomes Europe, Europeans are being left behind, bewildered by a project they feel has no place for them.
Patrick Smyth, European Correspondent, can be contacted at psmyth@irish-times.ie