During the past year, the European integration process steadily continued along familiar as well as less familiar paths. This contribution gives an overview of the core decisions made within the three pillars of the European construction in the year 2000. Although the vast majority of these decisions were closely linked to the approaching Eastern enlargement of the European Union, new avenues have been followed during the past year as well. The debate about the finality of the European integration process gained, by way ofspeeches of European leaders like Joschka Fischer, Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair and Guy Verhofstadt, fifty years after the Schuman declaration, a new momentum.