The euro continues its recovery against the US dollar. Everything seems rosy in the EU garden. Dissatisfaction among citizens has not become a concerted anti-European platform. The extreme right in France has failed in elections and it is inconceivable that German dissatisfaction with the euro will spill over into actual opposition to it. The British government is growing increasingly confident about its ability to take the UK into monetary union. Above all, enlargement seems to be on target.
Behind the scenes, though, there are time bombs. The most worrying is that the Irish still have to approve the EU's Treaty of Nice. If that vote were to be lost again the entire EU agenda could be thrown into mayhem.
The treaty is the linchpin of EU projects for the coming decade. It is designed to prepare for enlargement, while reforming existing institutions from within. It recalculates the voting allocations for individual countries inside the European Commission and the Council of Ministers and allocates national seats in the enlarged European parliament.