Forty-five years ago, in 1959, the visionary Frenchman Robert Schumann, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, said: "We should make sure we're ready to integrate the East European countries at the moment they request it." Encouraged by the disappearance of the Iron Curtain, the European Union has followed Schumann's advice. On May 1 next, by integrating 10 new Members, the European Union obtains a new dimension. Suddenly it will count 25 members and constitute a market of 453 million consumers, as against today's 380 million. Fortunately the European Union has already a large experience in integrating new members. The four enlargements of the past have been successful: with Denmark, Ireland and Britain in 1973, Greece in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1986 and Finland, Austria and Sweden in 1995. Yet the enlargement of May 2004 is particular. Never before have so many countries had to be integrated at the same time, and never before has the EU had to welcome countries with a Communist past - except for Malta and Cyprus, all the newcomers are so-called "countries in transition" from a Socialist economic system to full-blown capitalism.
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