A trigger of the conflagration, when Nazi
\nGermany invaded Poland on September 1st 1939, Gdansk, the big town port to the Baltic Sea on
\nThursday hosted many European leaders who gathered to launch a message of
\ncontinental unity. They all shared the standpoint of the Polish president, Bronislaw Komorowski, who recalled that the war was
\nstarted by the complicity of the Nazi and Bolshevik totalitarian regimes and
\nfurthermore, that the end of fighting, on May the 9th 1945 was not
\nthe equivalent of regaining freedom in Eastern Europe, but the installation of
\ncommunism and the beginning of the Cold War. <\/p>\n
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\n
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The European Council President, Donald
\nTusk, has said that the policy pursued in Europe nowadays is different from
\nthat in the 1930s and 1940s and has added that only few leaders will attend the
\nVictory Day parade in Moscow, because of the new Russian expansionist thrust in
\nUkraine. <\/p>\n
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\n
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Attending the ceremonies in Gdansk was
\nalso Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, the head of a state where the day of
\nMay 9th has a multifold significance. First of all, it marks the
\nanniversary of State Independence Day. <\/p>\n
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\n
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In 1877, foreign minister Mihail Kogalniceanu
\nproclaimed in Parliament the separation from the suzerain power of the time,
\nthe Ottoman Empire. After almost five centuries of Turkish domination,
\nBucharest’s ties with the Sublime Porte were already rather formal and
\nconsisted in the payment of a symbolic tribute. However, the Turks didn’t
\ntolerate an official break-up and tried to take military action. Defended on
\nthe battlefield and consecrated at the Congress of Berlin, independence became
\nthe cornerstone of modern Romania, to be later developed by kings Carol I and
\nFerdinand, of the German Hohenzollern family. <\/p>\n
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\n
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Instated in Bucharest on May the 10th
\n1866, the dynasty also linked its destiny to the Allied victory over Nazi
\nGermany. Historians say the decision made by the last king of Romania, Mihai I,
\nnow a nonagenarian, to take Romania out of the alliance with Hitler on August
\n1944 and to bring it closer to its traditional allies, the Anglo-Americans,
\nshortened WWII in Europe by at least 6 months. <\/p>\n
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\n
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However, the return to peace coincided, in the
\nRomanians’ case, with the installation of one of the longest and bloodies
\ndictatorships in their history. Condemned by Communism to terror, humiliation
\nand poverty, the Romanians can now celebrate Europe Day, just like all
\nEuropeans, thanks to the December 1989 anti-communist Revolution and their
\ncountry’s accession to the European Union in 2007. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
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Europe Day is also reminiscent of the first post-war
\nyears, when a new economic and security policy was needed, to boost confidence
\namong the European states. Back then, on May 9th 1950, the French
\nforeign minister, Robert Schuman, called on the former Western belligerents to
\nplace their coal and steel industries, the foundation of their military might,
\nunder a common authority and thus to create a first common market. This marked
\nthe birth of Europe as a political entity, the European Union, which now has 28
\nmember states and over one billion inhabitants, being one of the main economic
\nand political players in the world. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poland celebrated on Thursday 70 years since the end of WWII and the instatement, for almost half a century, of the Soviet occupation in Central and East Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":63786,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[38068,29066,32644,28945],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-63785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-allied-victory","tag-europe-day","tag-independence","tag-klaus-iohannis"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n