EU to formally invite ten countries to join in Athens today

Wednesday April 16 will become a historic date for Europe as in Athens leaders of 25 states will sign an accession treaty inviting Poland and nine other Eastern European countries to join the structures of the European Union. Poland first applied to join the EU in 1990 when the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki filed an official request to start negotiations with the Union. During today's ceremony each leader will have only three minutes to deliver his speech in order to limit the ceremony's total length to 2.5 hours. They will also plant olive trees to symbolize peace and olympic harmony. Prime Minister Leszek Miller and Foreign Affairs Minister Wło dzimierz Cimoszewicz will sign the treaty on behalf of Poland. "We do not want the expanded EU to be a non-existent structure. We want its internal mechanisms to function properly," Cimoszewicz told Rzeczpospolita. (Rz eczpospolita, pp. A1, A5) M.M.