Europe celebrates itself to 25

This evening at midnight French hour, the Fifteen become Ving-cinq. Review of the celebrations, the Atlantic in Oder.

By AFP

Friday April 30, 2004 (Liberation.fr - 18:04)

New Europeans began Friday to celebrate their entry in the UE, envisaged later in the night (midnight in Rome and Paris), by multiplying concerts and demonstrations symbolic systems in order to celebrate the unification of the continent. The rejoicings were annoncaient much more discrete in the old UE, where only Dublin, European capital for six months, and Berlin had envisaged to have fun the festival in the evening.

From Prague, pavoized with the colors of the 25 European Convention countries widened, at the alpine top of the Three borders in Slovénie, while passing by Budapest or Bratislava, of the leaders of the Ten new Member States have as of the morning said their happiness to belong to the European Union. "To join the UE, it is the end of a length and difficult voyage", entrusted to the AFP Czech the Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla, the opened out face. "Like much of Czechs, I am impatient to be in the UE mainly for the freedom which it will bring to us", it has says before making an enthusiastic speech in front of the crowd joined together on the Wenceslas place. Fifteen years ago, at the same place, of expressed monsters had made there peacefully fall the communist dictatorship.

More in the south, at the top of the Three borders, leader Austrians, Italian and slovenes met to 1.509 m of altitude, on a top shared by their three countries. "Let us preserve this name as a memory for the posterity when people do not know any more what are the borders", exclaimed, lyric, the Prime Minister slovene Anton Rop. From the very start of the afternoon, the concerts, for all the tastes, started for three days of music in the honor of the UE. In Prague, a festival for the first time invested all the islands of the river which crosses splendours of the capital.

In Budapest, the inhabitants gathered in a station of bus of the center of the objects of their everyday life of which they wanted to get rid before the UE. "I brought two television sets of the Soviet era, I leave them here, it is for me a relief and a symbol of freedom", said Laszlo Csorba, while a chime sounded the beginning of the festivities with midday. Former Polish president Lech Walesa, which largely contributed in the Eighties to the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, had the same words. "the dream of my life is accomplished", has it says to the Polish daily newspaper Zycie Warszawy, "now, my fight is finished".

In Warsaw, German president Johannes Rau expressed Friday morning in front of the two rooms of the Polish Parliament. And later, the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was to meet at midnight his Polish counterpart Wlodziemierz Cimoszewicz on the bridge which separates Frankfurt on Oder from the Polish city from Slubice. More solemnly, Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski was to hoist per same hour the spangled blue banner of the European Union on the place Jozef Pilsudski in Warsaw.

President Tassos Papadopoulos envisaged exactly the same thing in Cyprus, from which only the Greek part enters the UE for lack of agreement on a reunification. Previously, the diva Anna Vishy will have given a great concert in the open air.

At midnight also, the president of the European Commission Romano Prodi was to go in another divided city, in Gorizia/Nova Gorica at the border of Italy and the old Yugoslav republic of Slovénie.

In Riga, Lettons envisaged to be devoted to the song, a passion of the Baltic States, for a collective concert without interruption which was to begin Friday evening and to last all the day of Saturday. And the island of Malta, in the south of Italy, prepared with a gigantic festival. Everywhere, of the hundreds of fireworks were to be drawn in the night from adhesion.

Among Ten new members, mainly resulting from old communist Europe, the celebrations continue Saturday and even sometimes Sunday. In Dublin, capital of the UE for one six-month period, the 25 heads of State or government of the new UE meet Saturday for one day of welcome.