Europe Cheers Meeting of East and West
10 New EU Members
Lech Walesa, the former shipyard worker whose Solidarity trade union movement brought down Communist rule, told the Reuters news agency, "Poland's entry into the European Union fulfils my dreams and lifetime work."
The expansion advances the vision of the original crafters of what is known here as the European project, a decades-long attempt to break down the continent's historic divisions and knit together the economies -- and increasingly the political systems -- of countries as disparate as Sweden and Italy, Portugal and Estonia.
The new EU members are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus. In Cyprus, divided into ethnic Greek and Turkish zones since 1974, membership will apply only to the Greek side for now.
The expanded EU is home to 450 million people, whose gross domestic product will be larger than that of the United States. The new members have pledged to adopt the common European currency, the euro, in years ahead.
el - A reason to celebrate.
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