Leaders meet to seal EU enlargement
Leaders from across Europe set aside their concerns about the EU’s growing pains today to seal the entry of 10 nations into the European Union and mark the end of the continent’s Cold War divide.
After leading overnight festivities in their homelands, presidents and prime ministers from the new members will sit down for the first time as equal members of the EU’s governing council.
“We used to be the gateway to Europe. … We are now inside the gate,” Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy told revellers yesterday in Budapest.
“A new chapter can commence in our national history,” Medgyessy said. “Tomorrow is an opportunity for a new modern Hungary.”
The 10 nations officially became members after midnight in central Europe. They are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta.
The event was marked by fireworks and street celebrations in nations where EU entry is seen as a return to the European mainstream after decades under the Soviet yoke.
In Ireland – which holds the EU’s rotating presidency – a ”Day of Welcomes” was kicked off with evening fireworks in Dublin Bay. Festivities scheduled for today range from Slovak folk dancing in Cork to Hungarian poetry reading in Sligo and a banquet of eastern European delicacies in the streets of Dublin.
The newcomers want to emulate Ireland’s economic transformation from the EU’s poorest member when it joined in 1973 to one of the most affluent in the bloc today.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was to start the day with Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders at a ”Prayers for Europe” ceremony in Dublin Castle.
Leaders from the other 24 EU nations were expected to arrive for a summit that begins with symbolic raising of their flags outside the parkland residence of President Mary McAleese.
There are 5,000 gardaí and 2,000 soldiers on alert to prevent demonstrators from disrupting the event.
The short summit will toast the historic importance of EU enlargement, which comes just weeks after NATO opened its doors to Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria, most of them former Warsaw Pact foes. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999.
Any concerns about the impact of EU expansion will probably be put on hold until the bloc holds its next summit in mid-June at its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
Nevertheless, eastern European nations are annoyed that all of their established EU partners – except Ireland, Sweden and Britain – have placed restrictions of up to seven years on freedom of movement for workers from the relatively poor east into the west.
The other 12 nations have argued they must restrict the movement of workers - a freedom enshrined in EU treaty law – to deter a flood of workers from the new members.
Many in the older EU nations fear that jobs and investment will be lured to the cheaper labour markets in the east. But other government leaders argue that the entry of 74 million people into the EU will be good for business across the bloc.
“It creates an expanded market of 450 million consumers which will increase prosperity, trade, investment and jobs throughout the enlarged Europe,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in an article published yesterday in The Times.
Also attending the Dublin summit will be leaders of countries still knocking at the EU’s door: Romania and Bulgaria, which hope to join in 2007, and Turkey, which aims to open membership talks next year.
