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LETTER FROM TRADE COMMISSIONER PASCAL LAMY
1ST MAY, ENLARGEMENT DAY...
Hello, hallo, powitanie, bonjour, halloo, ciao, hola, γειά,
szia, olá, zdravo, goddag, haló, bok, hallå, hej ...
This is Danuta and Pascal writing from Brussels to share a
historic experience with you today: the enlargement of the
European Union to ten new countries, the re-unification of
Europe.
The enlargement taking place today is indeed an
extraordinary achievement, and arguably Europe's most
important ever. It is geopolitical in scale. The EU is now
the world's third biggest territorial unit: with 450 million
inhabitants, we are far smaller than China and India, but
far bigger than the United States, our Russian neighbour and
Japan.
The EU already accounts for 20% of world trade. Enlargement
will strengthen this economic base commensurately, perhaps
not straightaway - given the development gap between the old
and the new Member States but it will, we are sure, happen
over the next decade.
The next question is: what can and should we now do
together? Many challenges remain ahead of us ... yet popular
European-wide wisdom allows us to be optimistic: who has
never heard that "united we are stronger", "many men, many
minds", "several eyes see more than only one"...? The 25
Member states will work together to address the EU's current
issues, its future challenges but also to set its new
targets and re-define its raison d'être.
The whole EU must now be fuelled by debate, and it must at
the same time be ready to make the necessary compromises
which result from a genuine process of common
decision-making.
In this re-united Europe we believe the time has come to
tackle one of our big deficits, that of communication. We
hope this letter will stimulate a debate among European
citizens on the Europe we want for the future. Let's seize
the opportunity together to give Europe a human face.
Pascal Lamy
-> Read more on the
effects of enlargement on external
trade.
-> Read more on
Pascal Lamy
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