This is a CERR event recording.

Good afternoon, everybody, and apologies to keep you waiting. I'm Pedro Serrano, I'm the ambassador of the European Union to the United Kingdom, and a big welcome to Europe House to all of you.

Very important and moving event that we're hosting here today because we're here to celebrate the 20 years of the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, which brought 10 new states

into the European Union. And actually, it was an anticipation also of three more that came

in the few years afterwards. I have four main messages that I wanted to share with you. The first one is that this, and I see that Robert Cooper is here, who actually lived this as well,

when we were working together in Brussels at the time.

The first message is that the European Union changed its nature.

We were a Western organization and had been born as a Western

organization in the post-World War and helping shore up security in Europe. We were

built as a union in order to prevent further conflict from exploding within Europe.

But it was essentially at the time a Western organization, of course.

We had the fall of the Berlin Wall,

new democracies in Eastern Europe and Southern Europe,

struggling to find a new place in a world order that had changed.

And it was decided, I I think with a lot of vision

and wisdom and courage by then EU leaders to advance on the enlargement of the European Union and

this effectively took place in in 2004 and then the following years and I will refer to also to the future at the end.

But therefore first thing we changed the nature of the European Union it became a pan-European

organization. I think that's that's very important.

Second element is the fact that this benefited immensely all the member states that

joined the European at the time.

I have here multitude of figures saying, for example, that the substantial economic growth

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