Newcomers let hair down for ‘Big Bang’
Prime ministers gathered on a mountaintop in Slovenia, a bell tolled in Budapest and flags flew in Prague as 10 countries, eight from the former Soviet bloc, celebrated ahead of joining the EU at the stroke of midnight.
Dozens of events were to culminate with spectacular fireworks displays in the 10 newcomer nations at midnight when the EU becomes a potential economic and political powerhouse of 25 nations and 450 million citizens.
The mood was festive in the Czech Republic and the other nine mostly ex-Soviet bloc countries, whose accession after decades of Cold War-era isolation was hailed by EU leaders as “the end of the artificial divisions of the last century.”
The EU’s “Big Bang” expansion brings in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, along with Cyprus and Malta, which were never in the Soviet orbit.
The EU flag went up yesterday outside government offices in many newcomer countries, and newspapers greeted membership with banner headlines.
“Good day, Europe”, tiny Slovakia’s Pravda daily splashed over its front page.
Slovak MPs convened a special session of parliament in Bratislava, where chairman Pavol Hrusovsky eloquently reminded the nation how far it has come since shaking off communism in 1989.
“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 fulfilment of a dream.”
Scores of celebrants began gathering early in Prague’s central Wenceslas Square, the site of mass demonstrations that ended communism in former President Vaclav Havel’s 1989 Velvet Revolution.
At the top of a mountain on the borders of Austria, Italy and Slovenia, top officials met for a ceremony to mark the enlargement.
“Life has offered me the chance to stand for the first and the last time on a border that tomorrow will be no more,” Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop said.
In Prague, a Polish couple explained why they had come to an EU fair on historic Na Prikope street in the baroque splendour of the Czech capital, where national as well as the characteristic blue EU flags were flying at stands for each of the 25 EU states.
Wojtek Luranc, who is from Warsaw, said he and his wife wanted “to celebrate this day in the capital city of our neighbour”.
In Slovakia, computer programmer Peter Zigmund, 30, said he was “delighted” since joining the EU “will give us the chance to find a job, to travel, to do business”. The organisers of Lithuania’s EU celebrations asked citizens to help the country literally outshine the other newcomer nations by turning on all their lights and building bonfires shortly before midnight.
An American satellite was to photograph the region and beam the images back to the Baltic country.
In Poland, former president and Solidarity trade union leader Lech Walesa described his country’s entry into the EU as a dream come true. “I fought for our country to recover everything it lost under communism and the Soviets and now my struggle is over. My ship has come to port,” Walesa was quoted as saying in yesterday’s edition of the daily Zycie Warszawy.
Hungary kicked off celebrations with the tolling of a flower-shaped bell.
Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy and Budapest Mayor Gabor Demszky were on hand at the ceremony in Budapest’s historic castle district, in front of the presidential palace.
“We are finally triumphing over our misfortunes,” Medgyessy said as hundreds of diplomats and students looked on. “Our integration (into the EU) can be a historic turning point.”
Malta embraced EU membership with a massive party in the ancient fortified capital Valletta, but many Maltese fear for the island’s future as the union’s smallest State.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
