In two weeks, the EU will see its most spectacular achievement when euro notes and coins replace national currencies in 12 countries.
Before the end of next year, we will have completed negotiations to bring as many as 10 new countries into the Union.
In a few years, the EU will cover most of Europe. We are pulling down the last shreds of the Iron Curtain, uniting east and west. We are making the decisive steps towards a greater Europe.
By 2003, the EU will not only have a 60,000-strong military force but it will also be more able than today to respond to humanitarian crises.
All this will happen before the end of my mandate at the helm of the European Commission. It is clear that these events will affect the whole of our continent dramatically.
It is also clear that the current institutions of the EU are unable to meet challenges such as globalisation, enlargement and social inequalities effectively. The system needs to be reformed so the Union can take the decisions expected of it by its citizens more effectively.
The key question facing us today is perhaps the most difficult one: how to make the Union work so that an Europe-wide, euro-dominated single market functions for the good of us all and develops its political and social dimension?
Today, European leaders will meet in Laeken, close to Brussels, and adopt a declaration on the EU's future. This will begin a crucial phase of European integration.
We cannot afford to fail. I am calling on my fellow leaders in member-states to show courage and leadership by putting aside narrow-minded, short-term vested interests which threaten our Union with institutional paralysis.
For more than 15 years, we have seen perpetual institutional change. From treaty to treaty, the key decisions have been postponed. Now the time has come for courageous and firm decisions on a more stable institutional framework.
If we do not stabilise our system in a satisfactory way people will not understand it, and popular alienation and indifference could even grow. We need not only a more democratic and efficient Europe, but also a Europe which is more familiar to its citizens.
This is a battle we must win. We cannot go on creating new expectations without equipping ourselves with the means to deliver them.
Today, there is a growing imbalance between the new policies we must develop, the expectations of our citizens and the institutional means needed to satisfy them.
We need a strong Europe with a shared defence capacity, and a single voice in the world which contributes to world stability and prosperity.
Europe must be given a stronger role in migration, justice and police matters. We need Europe to make increased international mobility work better, safer and cleaner.
We have to strengthen our global efforts to achieve sustainable development and to help those in need. Monetary union must be complemented with European policies which sustain competitiveness and employment.
These institutional reforms must go well beyond those provided for by the Treaty of Nice a year ago. Let's not fool ourselves.
In Nice, only the minimum was achieved to allow us to go ahead with the enlargement process. Important questions were left unanswered. We need to do more if we want to make the enlarged EU work.
The Laeken European Council will launch a convention bringing together governments, national parliaments, the European Parliament and the European Commission to discuss our future more openly than ever before. This is something I have advocated for a long time.
The end result of this process will not be a European state but something completely new.
We are building a Union of nations and peoples which increases our ability to tackle shared problems, which improves all our lives and prospects. By pooling the sovereignty of all our nations, the power of all is being extended, not lost.
But to make this new creation work we need to make changes. I believe we must strengthen the role of European political parties and reflect on the role of members of the European Parliament.
We should establish a council for legislative affairs, clearly separated from its executive function, which should deliberate in public. We should involve national parliaments better in European affairs.
At the heart of the reform is a choice which only a few people properly understand.
The choice is between traditional diplomatic horse-trading - simple deals struck between governments in smoke-filled rooms - and a system which is several rungs further up the evolutionary ladder.
This system, which insiders call the "Community method", is based on democratic checks and balances between its institutions, the Commission, the Parliament and the Council, guarantees of equality and fair treatment, under the scrutiny of the European Court of Justice.
This system has brought us this far and we would be very unwise to lose it now.
The challenge at Laeken and beyond is to renew this method, to conserve its strengths, so the next generation may continue to reap its benefits.
Romano Prodi is president of the European Commission