Dear Sebastian [Domżalski, Chargé d’Affaires of Poland], many thanks to you and your colleagues of the Polish Embassy for the initiative of this family picnic to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the EU Enlargement to 10 new Member States.

Actually, 35 years ago, another picnic in the Hungarian city of Sopron, in early Summer 1989, was attended by East-Germans. On that occasion, many managed to cross over on the Austrian side of the border in a place called Deutschkreuz.

The Hungarian police and border guards let them pass: The Hungarian Government had chosen its camp. It had turned westward.

That was the beginning of the movement that would lead to the European family being reunited at last. And here we are today as a family, with our families to celebrate in a picnic 35 years after, the 2004 Enlargement when 10 European countries joined the EU:
Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. On 1 May 2004.

Not just 10 more Member states. 75 million more people became citizens of the EU.

What a journey this had been for these 10 new Member States!
When Milan Kundera wrote his famous “Tragedy of Central Europe” in 1984, he referred to how Central Europe had been “kidnapped” out of Europe's mental map.

It was 9 years after Helsinki that for many seemed to be the seal of approval on the European order, an order of a divided Europe, with two spheres with an Iron Curtain shut in the middle.
In his text, Kundera imagined an enlargement of Europe to the East. That was a visionary projection. It helped to open minds for the EU’s political expansion 20 years later.

He expressed that hope carried in Poland by Solidarnosc leaders and by Bronisław Geremek who said: “we have been in a bad place, we want to be in a better one, and that better place is called Europe”.

Europe has been for long a terrain of divisions and wars.
But also a terrain of constant cross-fertilisation, a continent trading goods (my hometown, La Rochelle a harbour on the French Atlantic Coast was part of the Hanseatic league); and trading ideas –through the network of universities in the middle-
ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment periods ; or the “grand tours” in the 19th century.

This inspired a sense of belonging: The Magnet Europa described by Konrad Adenauer.

The European Homelands as Timothy Garton Ash put it beautifully in his eponymous book1.

Europe as we know it, recovers different dimensions and realities:
- Geographical;
- Historical;
- Cultural;
- Institutional ones, of which the EU is the major emanation;
But also …
- a personal dimension, capturing the lives of European citizens who got to travel freely through Europe as a single space without border controls, from Lisbon to Lapland, from Cork to Cyprus, from Sweden to Sicily; who learned other European languages; who studied in another European Union country as part of
the EU Erasmus university exchange programme; who married a partner from another EU country - We are many living examples today of those bi-national European families.

The EU stands at the conjunction of these different currents and threads. It has prospered and enlarged. In successive waves.
But the family reunion is not yet complete.

Eastern Europe, remained long “enslaved by Russia” as Kundera put it, an imperial entity that had denied the national aspirations of many people, in Moldova in Ukraine and in Southern Caucasus. They gained independence but found themselves at the mercy of the Russian imperialist revisionism that has resulted in frozen conflicts and open wars, with the terrible war of aggression against Ukraine.

The Western Balkans after the terrible wars in the 90’s has been looking towards the EU.

The EU then further enlarged: in 2007 to Bulgaria and Romania and in 2013 to Croatia.

Through these enlargements, the EU has grown bigger, stronger, richer.

The fact that there are more countries wanting to join it speaks for itself. 9 candidate countries in fact: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, Ukraine.

1 His book was a great source of inspiration. A must-read!
One country took the opposite route. And it seems that its people seem to regret it already.

The EU doesn’t pretend to represent and encapsulate all this Europe house. Yet it has been one the main building blocks of it. Beyond the EU, the project of European Political Community launched in 2022 is an attempt to bring under one common tent all countries from the same European geography. Those that share a commonality of principles and a common aspiration to peace, security and stability. Russia and Belarus, through their
belligerent posture, have voted themselves out the European house.

The EU will further enlarge. It is a matter of strategic necessity. Maybe a question of “manifest destiny”.

In these times of resurgence of power politics, of confrontation, of imperialist aggressions, The EU remains the most unique, modern and I dare say the most subversive political project of our times, a Union of sovereign states agreeing to pool and transfer resources and power in a common legal and institutional order:
- a Union that has no aggressive agenda;
- a Union that remains a beacon a prosperity and stability;
- a Union that seeks to promote cooperation and solutions with willing partners.

And India in this respect has emerged as an incredibly important strategic partner for the EU;
- a Union that stands strong and with resolve in the face of danger.
We emerged from the ashes of Apocalypse in the WWII; we grew in the shadow of the Cold War; we thrived in the post- Cold War; we stand now determined and solidaire in this era that some coined as pre-war.

For one simple reason: to avoid further war and destruction of which our continent has known all too well the immense cost.
This sense of the eventful history we went through together, and of belonging that unites us, should be an encouragement for sharing and appreciating even more what this unique project has brought to all of us, but also to the world.

This picnic, under the sign of the European Weeks 2024, launches a series of joint events that will culminate in the Europe Day on 9 May.

For now let’s celebrate today together the spirit of Enlargement as a big European family.

Thank you.

./. END