A rchive Date
[ 30-04-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ European Union ]
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[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4873018/
EU expansion creates biggest trading bloc
Celebrations across Europe as east, west reunite after decades
Updated: 6:08 p.m. ET April 30, 2004
WARSAW, Poland - Eight former communist countries and two Mediterranean islands joined the European Union on Saturday in a historic reunification of western and eastern Europe 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus and Malta officially joined the union at midnight central European time (6 p.m. ET Friday).
The enlargement, the biggest ever, makes the new 25-member European Union the world’s most powerful single trading bloc, with 450 million citizens producing nearly a quarter of global wealth.
Street parties, concerts and border festivities broke out across central and eastern Europe as political leaders hailed the final reversal of five decades of Soviet-dominated communist rule that followed World War II.
Star-studded blue EU flags were hoisted and fireworks lighted the sky from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Leaders of the new bloc held a celebratory summit in Dublin.
In Poland, by far the biggest newcomer, outgoing Prime Minister Leszek Miller raised the EU flag and toasted Poland’s future in Europe at a televised ceremony with his cabinet, beating the official celebrations by eight hours.
“Poland’s entry into the European Union fulfills my dreams and lifetime work,” Lech Walesa, whose Solidarity movement toppled communism in Poland in 1989, told Reuters.
For east Europeans, enlargement crowns 15 years of often-painful economic reforms since the collapse of communist rule.
“For the generation that lived in the communist prison surrounded by barbed wire, the European Union is a dream come true. Fifteen years ago we would not even have dared dream this dream,” said Pavol Hrusovsky, a member of the Slovakian parliament.
‘Welcome to Europe’
Cyprus and the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania officially celebrated entry an hour earlier because they lie in a time zone east of the bulk of continental Europe.
Ireland, a rags-to-riches model of the benefits of joining the European Union, planned a “Day of Welcomes” for the newcomers Saturday.
“This is the end game of the process which was started in 1988-89. Those countries that were behind the Iron Curtain ... for them, tomorrow ends all of that terrible period,” said Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who holds of the EU presidency.
In one of the first of a string of events spread over two days, the leaders of Austria, Italy and Slovenia shook hands at the 4,700-foot Tromeja summit in the Alps, where their countries’ borders meet.
“Slovenia, welcome to Europe,” Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said.
Addressing their parliaments or speaking in interviews, leaders hailed enlargement as a historic triumph while trying to allay fears that it would be too costly for the rich club.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has helped stoke such fears by complaining about the new members’ much lower tax rates, said Germany stood to gain most as it would be surrounded by allies, friends and economic partners.
Global clout
The European Union’s biggest expansion will increase the bloc’s population by 75 million, its territory by 25 percent but its gross domestic product by less than 5 percent.
The European Union faces profound change as it tries to integrate poorer east Europeans, stay manageable with 25 nations around the table and fight immigration and organized crime as border posts move 620 miles eastward, to the frontiers of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
Just as reconciliation between France and Germany paved the way to creation of the European Union in 1957, enlargement now crowns Polish and German efforts to overcome their pasts.
German President Johannes Rau told Poles on Friday that the two nations were bound to a common destiny.
“For Poles and Germans, tomorrow begins a completely new chapter in our relations as neighbors — a new era of great opportunities and far-reaching possibilities,” he told the Warsaw parliament. “Without Poland, Europe would not be Europe.”
Alongside the official pomp and street parties, some unorthodox celebrations were under way.
Lithuanians switched on lights countrywide to make the land glow on satellite pictures; Hungarians dumped unwanted belongings in a pile at a central Budapest square. In Estonia, 20,000 volunteers started planting a million trees.
For some older east Europeans who suffered the privations of communism, enlargement may have come too late.
“What’s there to celebrate?” asked Irena Babkova, 67, a pensioner in Prague. “Prices will go up, and I will have even less than I do now. I hope the younger people celebrate. For them, it is an opportunity.”
Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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