EU leaders hail their new frontiers

Under azure skies and heavy security, united Europe became a reality yesterday when leaders from west and east erased the frontiers of a divided continent in the ancient birthplace of democracy.

Gathered in the shadow of the Acropolis in Athens, heads of government from the 10 incoming member states signed the treaty of accession to the European Union, turning the club of 15 into one of 25 that is still struggling to carve out a world role and rewrite its own rules.

With deep divisions over war in Iraq casting a heavy pall, and thousands of demonstrators trading petrol bombs for police tear gas and lambasting Tony Blair for fighting alongside America, Costas Simitis, the Greek prime minister and summit host, set the tone by hailing a ”historic day”. He urged members new and old ”to look to the future with optimism and creativity.”

Blair, busy mending fences over Iraq, referred pointedly to freedom from dictatorship and repression for former communist countries — his subtext unmistakably about Saddam Hussein, not the Iron Curtain.

Yet it was a day when high-flown rhetoric about the EU’s biggest ever enlargement drowned out most discordant noises, a time for rapprochement instead of the furious rows of recent months.

”This union represents our common determination to put an end to centuries of conflict and to transcend former divisions on our continent,” said the summit declaration. ”Accession is a new contract between our peoples and not merely a treaty between states.”

Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, compared the event to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. ”With this step, the union is finally overcoming the division of the European continent into east and west,” he said.

Central Athens was deserted save for a huge police presence, but the flags of all 25 countries fluttered over the Stoa of Attalos, the colonnaded monument at the foot of the Acropolis.

Perfect spring weather and olive and almond trees swaying faintly in the breeze provided a lovely backdrop as leaders stuck to their allotted three minutes to extol the virtues of European unity.

It was not a time to remember the long years of negotiations and brinkmanship over terms of entry — on issues ranging from financial services to farm subsidies — nor for anticipating the referendums that lie ahead in some member states, as well as the new intake, where euroscepticism is already rising.

Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, all former communist countries, have struggled for more than a decade to transform themselves into fully fledged market economies and democracies and meet the EU’s rigorous standards.

For Cyprus and Malta, former British colonies, the path to membership has been less painful. But Cyprus remains divided, pending an elusive peace settlement between its Greek and Turkish communities.

The accession of the 10 next May will add 75-million people to the EU’s population, bringing it to 450-million. It will transform the union beyond recognition.

Politically this enlargement spells an end of the dominance of the old Franco-German alliance and catapults Poland into the top six. It means that big countries will be outnumbered by small ones.

Things will change economically too, with the wealth of the newcomers ranging from 29% of the EU average in Lithuania to 85% in Cyprus. Eventually, all will join the eurozone. But expansion will boost the EU’s gross domestic product by only 0,5.%

The convention on the future of Europe, run by the former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, will finish its work by June so that new treaty talks can start in September. This means the treaty governing an EU of 25 will be signed in Rome in about a year’s time.

The EU may still be deeply unpopular — in Britain and elsewhere. But the summit was a reminder of how much of a magnet it still is to those aspiring to join.