Published: 05.01.2004
By William J. Kole
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The European Union expanded today to take in a region
isolated during the Cold War, creating a 25-nation economic giant with the potential
to rival the United States.
Church bells rang and fireworks exploded over Eastern Europe in celebration.
Ten countries joined the EU in a historic enlargement taking in a broad swath
of the former Soviet bloc - a region separated for decades from the West by
barbed wire and ideology - and widening to 450 million citizens.
Hundreds of thousands of jubilant revelers packed city squares in the newcomer
nations, whose entry after overcoming tyranny 15 years ago was hailed by EU
leaders as "the end of the artificial divisions of the last century."
The EU's biggest expansion in its 47-year history brings in eight formerly communist
countries - the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
Slovakia and Slovenia - along with Cyprus and Malta.
Heads of state were gathering in Ireland, which holds the rotating EU presidency,
for a formal "Day of Welcomes" in Dublin today.
"For me, it's a great day," said Lenka Sladka, 24, a Prague university
student. "Now we can freely travel or study everywhere. My parents could
not even dream of it."
"It's a day that we will read about in history books," said Eliza
Malek, 17, in Warsaw, Poland.
Enlargement stirred strong emotions both in the "new" Europe - so
dubbed by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld before the U.S.-led war
in Iraq, which most of the newcomers supported - and in the "old."
The EU flag - a circle of yellow stars on a blue field - went up Friday outside
the presidential palace in tiny Slovakia, where parliament speaker Pavol Hrusovsky
delivered a stirring reminder of how far the country has come since shaking
off communism.
"In 1989, we cut up the barbed wire. Pieces of this wire have for us become
a symbol of the end of the totalitarian regime," he said. "For the
generation which lived in captivity of the barbed wire, the EU means a fulfillment
of a dream."
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he gets misty just thinking
about it. "I get tears in my eyes," he said while meeting with students
from the 10 new countries.
Enlargement signals a "completely new chapter" in relations between
Germany and Poland that were blackened by the Nazi occupation, German President
Johannes Rau said in a landmark speech to the Polish parliament.
In the German town of Zittau, "E-Day" festivities were held in a grassy
meadow on the Neisse River where Germany meets Poland and the Czech Republic.
Makeshift pontoon bridges, festooned with national and EU flags, were set up
to link the three neighbors.
But the jubilation was tinged with frustration: fears in the newcomer nations
of a loss of national identity and steep price increases, and worries in the
EU's core 15 member states of a crush of immigrants as national borders gradually
disappear.