Will They? Won't They? Ten years after the fall of communism, Western Europe is still wondering whether the east is ever going to straighten itself out.
The answer, looking ahead another 10 or 20 years, is probably yes - and no. For Eastern Europe is divided between a reforming north, learning from its many mistakes, and a stagnant south which seems destined to continue making the same mistakes over and over again.
Since the fall of communism, disappointment has set in across the east - with corruption and mismanagement wiping out the hopes of a quick passage to Western-style prosperity. But on the sliding scale of progress - democracy, economics and security - the northerners (Czechs, Hungarians, Poles and Slovaks) look like bright prospects for eventual membership of the European Union.
NATO membership has already solidified their security worries. Human rights may be poor regarding gypsies but otherwise the northern group have functioning democracies. Economically, all have managed to wrench economies from reliance on central control to the more anarchic free market. Wages are low, but are at least rising. Corruption is strong, but it is not the mainspring.
This north-south divide cuts through former Yugoslavia, which was never truly a part of the Soviet bloc. On the right side of the tracks, tiny Slovenia is up there with the Poles, while its neighbour, Croatia, is likely to follow if, as expected, the voters kick out its hardline nationalist government in elections this Christmas.
But in the south it is a different story. The rest of former Yugoslavia is too full of hatred and strife to even begin economic reforms - they have first to stop fighting each other. Albania meanwhile, recovering from the brain-washing of the most totalitarian of all the communist regimes, is simply too dazed to be integrated into Europe - the government's priority now is sending commandos into the hills to fight bandit gangs.
And in the south-east, Romania and Bulgaria seem incapable of fixing their problems. Democracy is not a problem with these two. Each has elected governments of both left and right - in Bulgaria's case several times - but whoever the voters choose, the corruption and mismanagement remain the same.
Something more than corruption is at work here: a system labelled Byzantine by Westerners in which grace-and-favour and bribes are seen as part of the mechanics of life. In this climate, private enterprise, the great totem of progress, never gets going.
Unfairly perhaps, northerners gloat that while Czechs, Hungarians and Poles once rose up against their former Soviet masters, the Bulgarians and Romanians kept mum during the years of communism. Similarly southerners, too, complain that the West favours northerners because they are predominantly Roman Catholic, over the Christian Orthodox south.
Whatever the reason, the southern Balkans is likely to continue going nowhere fast. Bulgaria has seen three changes from left to right, and is likely to see a further left turn after the failures of the present centre-right administration to handle privatisation.
The failure of the centre-right to get any kind of grip on Romania, together with broken promises to the IMF, has now seen the former communist polit-bureau member, Ion Iliescu, surge ahead in polls for next year's elections.
These governments have proved unable to tackle corruption - partly because they are involved in it. The transition from communism to capitalism requires an effort to break the circle. In a corrupt society, being honest is a fool's game. Yet if no-one tries, the system remains in place. Shell Oil took many months to open a filling station in Romania - because they decided not to pay the customary bribes to the stream of officials needed to move the paperwork.
The West pins its hopes on small business taking the load off the ailing state companies, and breathing life and cash into the system.
Optimists hope that the West will become more involved, trying to force through reforms that see small companies prosper in a system backed by judges no longer corrupt and open to political influence.
But there is yet one more factor which may ensure that the song down here remains the same. There are many bright, talented people in the Balkans, products of an education system which, in its thoroughness, is consistently underestimated by the West.
The problem is that these people do not stay. They emigrate. Three out of four of the translators I worked with following Romania's revolution have prospered in the past decade - but only by moving to America, Canada and Britain.
One irony of the next 10 years is that the talent-hungry West will continue to snap up the doctors, scientists, programmers, artists and bankers of the Balkans, growing intellectually richer while the east is starved of the talent it needs to climb out of its hole.
Chris Stephen can be contacted at chrisstephen@compuserve.com