12/22/2007

Europe's east-west border is at last wide open

In a ceremony marking the final chapter in the unification of Eastern and Western Europe that began more than 18 years ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Portugal dismantled border-crossing points on a frontier that had symbolized the Cold War divide.

Merkel, a child of that division, stood in freezing temperatures with Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic and Prime Minister José Sócrates of Portugal, which holds the rotating European Union presidency.

Merkel's parents decided to leave West Germany for East Germany after World War II, and she had no opportunity to travel to the West until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. She called the dismantling of the border crossing a "truly historical moment."

"We have one Europe, where passport controls from Sweden to Italy, from Portugal to the Baltic states no longer exist," she said. "That is a freedom, a freedom to travel. The schoolchildren of today can experience a normal Europe, something of which our parents and grandparents could only dream."

In a televised ceremony in Zittau, in Eastern Germany on a frontier that forks into Poland and the Czech Republic, Merkel was joined by Tusk, Poland's newly elected prime minister, who said it was "unbelievable, a dream come true" that border controls were being dismantled. Topolanek said, "The path toward freedom has ended."

The weather and the low-key setting were in sharp contrast to those extraordinary, emotional and often dangerous days leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tens of thousands of East Germans had traveled to Czechoslovakia, where they converged on the West German Embassy in Prague. There, they scaled the elegant iron gates of the residence, seeking refuge until they were given permission by the East German and Czechoslovak authorities to leave for the West.

East Germans had already moved droves to Hungary, where tens of thousands were camping out under warm skies in Budapest, refusing to leave and return to East Germany, despite demands by East Berlin that Hungary send them back. After negotiations between Budapest and Chancellor Helmut Kohl's conservative government in Bonn, West Germany, it was agreed that Hungary would not give in to East Berlin's demands.

Then, on June 27, 1989, the foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyula Horn, went to the border that divided their countries. There, together, with a pair of heavy iron pliers they began to cut through the thick barbed-wire fence that for decades had divided East from West. East Germans rushed through the breach and eventually made their way to West Germany.

On Friday, Mock and Horn were thanked by Austrian and Hungarian leaders at a border-crossing ceremony as Hungary joined the Schengen zone, as the free-travel area is known, ending the need for passport controls on the Austrian border. Other new Schengen members are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta.

Two EU members, Ireland and Britain, have not joined the Schengen zone, and two non-EU members, Norway and Iceland, are part of it.

Bulgaria and Romania will have to wait a few more years to make their borders with Turkey, Moldova and other countries secure before they can join.

Source: iht.com



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