Countdown to EU enlargement
2004-04-30 21:53
Dublin - Five decades after the Iron Curtain split Europe, the European Union was counting down on Friday to its biggest and boldest expansion yet with the entry of 10 mainly ex-communist states into the fold.
At the stroke of midnight Central European Time, the EU was to enter into a new era - and, many say, uncharted waters - long after it was founded out of the trauma of World War II as a force for partnership.
The accession of Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will swell the EU's ranks to 25 nations and its population to more than 450 million.
"Welcome to the new Europe," trumpeted European Commission head Romano Prodi.
Nearly six years after the 10 nations began entry negotiations, and after a marathon bout of legislating to transpose the 80 000 pages of EU law on to national statute books, the end was in sight.
'Artificial division is at an end'
The EU president, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, hailed enlargement as the climax to the reunification of Europe, 15 years after the Berlin Wall came crashing down to consign the Soviet bloc to history.
"Half a century after Winston Churchill's famous Iron Curtain speech, the artificial division of Europe is finally and conclusively at an end," Ahern wrote in the Wall Street Journal newspaper.
The Cold War, he recalled, "consigned a generation of Europeans to be onlookers, as the rest of the continent forged a common future of peace and prosperity based on cooperation and partnership".
"Tomorrow, in Europe, we will celebrate the end of that division."
Few sites in Europe were more emblematic of the imminent change than the shared border between Austria, Italy and Slovenia, where leaders of the three countries gathered on Friday for a mountain-top celebration.
Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop said atop the 1 509m summit: "Life has offered me the chance to stand for the first and the last time on a border that tomorrow will be no more.
Hosting a Day of Welcomes
"We are writing new rules for Europe as free and equal nations that are heirs to wars, conquests and the tectonic shifts of history," Rop said.
Ireland was going all out to celebrate, hosting a Day of Welcomes in the capital, Dublin, and 10 other cities - each twinned with an EU newcomer.
Irish police laid on a huge security operation, however, fearful of May Day anti-globalisation protestors spoiling the EU party with 25 heads of state and government due in town.
The first protest event began without incident as several hundred cyclists - many dressed in anarchist black - set off through the centre of Dublin calling for a Europe "that puts people before profit".
The focus of protests was to be Dublin's Phoenix Park, one of the largest enclosed city parks in the world, which will be completely closed off for the weekend for the celebrations, including a summit on Saturday of all EU leaders.
- AFP