Leaders of ”old” and ”new” Europe embraced in ceremonies and parties along their shared and once barbed borders on Friday, ushering in a new era.
Celebrations began across the continent, with firework shows, concerts and less conventional festivities organised in cities and at border crossings.
In Estonia, 20 000 volunteers began planting a million trees. Lithuania decided to outshine its fellow newcomers by turning on lights and setting bonfires to light up the nation on satellite images as midnight approached. Lithuania, along with Latvia, Estonia and Cyprus, also enjoyed a head start, chiming in midnight one hour before the rest of the continent.
Traders in London’s Carnaby Street said they would accept payment in euros today.
For many new EU members, enlargement signifies the definitive end of the cold war.
Perhaps the most symbolic event today will be on the bridge between Frankfurt an der Oder in eastern Germany and Slubice in Poland, with the German and Polish foreign ministers meeting midway to shake hands.
Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd singer, has composed an enlargement song — called It Will Be Fine — intended for its first public performance at midnight in Malta as part of a new opera.
The work is in English and French and involves an 84-piece orchestra, three soloists and an adult and children’s choir. In another celebration concert the most popular performers from the new member states were featuring in a two-hour show linking the Berliner Konzerthaus and an open air stage in Warsaw.
Lech Walesa, whose Solidarity movement toppled communism in Poland in 1989, said: ”Poland’s entry into the European Union fulfils my dreams and lifetime work.”
In a speech to Poland’s parliament the German president, Johannes Rau, said: ”For Germany and Poland a completely new chapter in our relationship as neighbours is beginning, a new epoch with great possibilities and wide-reaching perspectives.”
Germany’s chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, said: ”The decisive step towards unifying the continent was done by the people of central and eastern Europe.
”They shook off oppression in peaceful revolutions. They have made big sacrifices and undergone deep reforms.”
Slovak lawmakers convened a special session of parliament where the chairperson, Pavol Hrusovsky, reminded the nation how far it had come since shaking off communism.
”In 1989, we cut up the barbed wire,” he said. ”Pieces of this wire have for us become a symbol of the end of the totalitarian regime. For the generation which lived in captivity of the barbed wire, the EU means a fulfilment of a dream.”
”I get tears in my eyes,” said the French prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, while meeting a group of students from the 10 new countries. ”I am part of a generation that believes in Europe. Europe is the force that prevents hate from being eternal. We must open our hearts to this new Europe.”
In the German town of Zittau festivities were held in a meadow on the Neisse river where Germany meets Poland and the Czech Republic. Makeshift pontoon bridges, festooned with the flags of the three countries and the EU, were set up to link the neighbours.
Hungarian officials rang ancient bells while other Hungarians chose to celebrate by dumping unwanted belongings in a square in Budapest. Austrian, Italian and Slovenian officials shook hands at Tromeja, their shared border 1 500 metres up in the Alps. – Guardian Unlimited Â