On Wednesday, ten countries celebrated 20 years in the European Union.
Poland had found its place "among friends, among allies, in Europe, at home: This is what generations of Poles have fought for," said Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in a ceremony at the Polish-German border, on the bridge over the Oder river that joins the cities of Słubice and Frankfurt an der Oder.
May 1, 2004 was the largest single expansion in the history of the EU. Of the ten countries that joined that day, eight had emerged from behind the Iron Curtain in the wake of the upheavals of 1989: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
The Mediterranean island nations of Malta and Cyprus also joined the same day. Romania and Bulgaria joined in 2007. Croatia followed in 2013. Britain - the only country so far to have left the EU - departed in 2020.
Sikorski was joined at the ceremony on the Oder by his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock. She said the whole of the EU had benefited from the 2004 expansion, not just the new members.
But European integration "does not fall from the sky", she said. With war raging in Ukraine, "the EU must be reformed to be stronger in security policy, to speak with one voice, and at the same time accept those countries that also want to become part of this union of freedom and security."
A joint statement on Wednesday by the presidents of the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia read: "We have experienced tremendous economic growth, stability and security, while at the same time representing a remarkable success story of European integration and transformation."
The day before, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Czech President Petr Pavel marked the anniversary at a meeting in Prague. Both spoke in support of enlarging the EU still further.
"If we leave the Western Balkan states, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia at the door for too long, we will hand them over to players like Russia, who do not mean well by Europeans and Europe at all," warned Pavel. Steinmeier said: "The states of the Western Balkans, Ukraine and Moldova belong to a free Europe and to our Union."
'A DATE WITH HISTORY'
European Council President Charles Michel said on Monday that the EU and candidates for EU membership must be ready for enlargement by 2030, calling it "a date with history."
But the prospect of enlargement stokes long-standing debates among current EU members about how the bloc should function. A particularly heated question is whether the EU should continue giving each country a veto on certain types of decisions, such as defence and budgets.
Another is whether countries that break EU rules should still be able to receive payments from its shared budget.
"The EU is above all a union of values, not an ATM," said Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib, who wants to "solve the problem of sometimes abusive vetoes."
Baerbock said: "Our generation is now faced with the task of defending and strengthening the European project of peace and freedom, even if it costs an incredible amount of energy." She added that reforms are necessary for this to succeed, including fewer veto options.
WESTERN BALKANS STILL WAITING
At a meeting of Europe ministers in Brussels on Tuesday, the representatives of the ten current EU membership hopefuls were included for the first time - Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, Turkey and Ukraine.
European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová said it was "a good rehearsal" of what it would be like to debate with 37 members.
Turkey became an EU candidate in 1999, but has probably never been further away from membership than it is today, thanks to the strongman regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The Western Balkan nations are a different story. Brussels sees Montenegro as the closest to accession. But no enlargement is expected until the end of this decade at the earliest.
For Slovenia, joining the EU fulfilled one of the key foreign policy objectives that it set after achieving independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
Polls suggest that popular support for the EU in Slovenia remains higher than the EU average, and there are no eurosceptic parties in the country's parliament.
EU HAS 'LEARNED A LOT' ABOUT RUSSIA FROM EASTERN MEMBERS
In an interview late April with several news agencies, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that "thanks to the bitter experience that countries in Central and Eastern Europe had with the Soviet Union, the EU has learned a lot about the patterns of behaviour of the Kremlin and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and has become more vigilant."
The EU is not perfect, "but the benefits of EU membership are enormous," she said. "Of course we are much stronger [at] 27 than we were with 15," von der Leyen said.
The content of this article is based on reporting by BTA, CTK, dpa, EFE, FENA, Lusa, MIA, PAP, Ritzau, STA, Tanjug, TASR as part of the European Newsroom (enr) project.
