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Policy lives only if there is a sense of history and the consequence of the Berlin Wall fall was so strong at dawn of the new millennium, the new countries demand of being part of Europe, the idea that this continent should close a break caused by war and by the Iron Courtain. Someone said it happen too fast, that this enlargement didn’t take into account the fears. But how can you take the fears into account when toy have to chose between “yes” and “no” in a moment. Then I immediately turned the enlargement argument off, with a personal effort, I have to admitt. They proposed me the aim of 6 countries within 10 years. In less than 5 years 10 countries, not 6, joined the European Community. I couln’t avoid this, otherwise we would have divisions and tensions again, which woul have slowed down the continent development and peace. That’s the power of enlargement, made with prudence, seriously, with a huge job from my officials and of my commissioners, by dividing the “aquis comunitaire”, i.e. our laws patrimony, into 31 different chapters, by analysing it chapter by chapter with each country and this countries’ parliaments, which worked night and day in order to make the laws adequate for this innovation. This countries’ governments, which worked to put this laws in force, the Commission, looking after this job in order to reassure the public opinion in the member countries and in the new ones. The sense of joining the same Community, an absolutely new sense with a strong emotional element. This aspects of life of the institutions are never to be underestimated, because they’ll also became the landmark of history. The enlargement to 10 new countries that means 80 million new European people, coming from completely different historical experiences, wasn’t like the former enlargements, Spain, Portugal, Greece, which basicly breath the same history, we now had to close a wound. The enlargement, then, it’s not only an economic message, a limitated message, it’s a political one: Europe can export democracy and export it for a long while and export it forever, because these are going to be European Union members with decision capability and for the first time these countries, some of them after centuries, like Poland, find themselves in the situation of joining a community like friends and like deciding members, no longer squashed by the countries surrounding them. That’s why the enlargement must be done quickly, seriously, but in a while that would prevent from regrets, that wold prevent others from slowing down this great decision-making process. Then the work went on and a great,emotionally strong, ceremony for this countries joining the community took place on on the 1st May 2004. Obviously this process isn’t finished yet, because at the same time we launched the problem of “the ring of friends”, to be built aound the European members. The ring of the countries sharing everything with us, but the institutions in order to give stability not only inside Europe but also to those who surround it. It’s understood that the enlargement isn’t finished yet because it will have to comprehend the Balkans, that when pacified will will enter Europe and then there is still opened the problem of Turkey. But the continent has a definitive own order, now we have to probe it, to make it concrete, to strenghten it, but the definitive order has been proposed, and approved by everybody.
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