MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

EU now has 25 member states.

Ten countries, eight of them former Soviet republics, this Wednesday joined the European Union after signing an enlargement treaty in the Acropolis of Athens, symbol of democracy, taking the number of EU states to 25, the most ambitious incorporation in the last fifty years.

Heads of state or government from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, plus Cyprus and Malta took part in the ceremony together with their counterparts from the current fifteen EU members.

The Athens treaty adds 75 million people to the EU totalling 450 million and virtually covers most of former Communist Europe.

"A historic day that definitively erases the East-West division", said Prime Minister Kostas Simitis from Greece that currently chairs the EU Commission.

"It is only today that the Berlin Wall has really fallen", added Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

However the Athens agreement still has to be approved by the current fifteen EU members while the ratification process continues in the newly incorporated countries. Referendums in Hungary, Malta and Slovenia have been comfortably affirmative.

The official incorporation takes place next May, and Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria are scheduled for 2006.

European leaders also agreed in an Athens Declaration in which they expressed their commitment to democracy and their determination to end centuries of conflict on the European continent.

The Athens ceremony was also an opportunity for the divided leaders (UK and Spain, France and Germany) over the issue of war in Iraq to mend fences.

During the meeting it was also announced that the draft of the EU constitution will be released next June 20 when the summit in Greece.