The Fifth Enlargement of the EU, Five Years On: The Case of Poland and the Czech Republic Europe.Visions n°2, November 2008

In 2009, Europe will celebrate many anniversaries, all of which are of special importance for the new member states. It will be five years since the European Union"s (EU) big bang enlargement of 2004; ten years since the first enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to post-communist states; twenty years after the round-table negotiations in Poland and the fall of the Berlin Wall; seventy years since the beginning of World War II. With the exception of the Berlin Wall and the start of World War II, all other anniversaries will be celebrated during a new member state"s (the Czech Republic"s) EU Presidency: NATO enlarged in March, the EU in May, and the first partially-free elections were held in Poland in June.