May 2, 2004: At midnight on Friday ten countries officially joined the European Union, increasing the EU's population by 74 million people. The leaders of the 25 EU countries celebrated the historic event in Dublin, Ireland. Germany's foreign minister Joschka Fischer and his Polish counterpart, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, shook hands in a symbolic gesture at the border between Germany and Poland in the city of Frankfurt on the Oder.

In a special session of Germany's parlament, the Bundestag, held on April 30 to celebrate the new Europe, chancellor Gerhard Schröder emphasized the "historic dimension" of the European Union's eastward expansion. Schröder also said that Germany would benefit the most economically from the eastward expansion, since Germany is already the number one trading partner of nearly all the new EU countries.

The eastward expansion of the European Union also means that Germany's capital city of Berlin is no longer on the eastern fringe of the Union, but at its center, providing companies in Berlin additional opportunities for expansion. Poland, for example, is entitled to € 12.5 billion in infrastructure support from Brussels in the first 2 years of the country's EU membership. Once the Polish railway system has been improved to accommodate trains traveling at the – for German standards – moderate speed of 100 mph, the Polish Baltic sea port of Stettin will only be 90 minutes by train from Berlin.

The Bundestag's special session was marred by sharp controversy over the question of future Turkish membership in the EU. After chancellor Schröder had spoken favorably about the possibility of Turkey becoming a member of the EU, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition leader Angela Merkel responded by saying that she was "fed up with making promises to Turkey that cannot be kept." Commenting on future expansion of the EU, Germany's former foreign minister Klaus Kinkel added that "we are not allowed to bite off more than we can chew."

Right-wing parties in Germany are sceptical about the impact of the expanded European Union. In a press release on May 1, the "Republican" party questioned who would profit from the new business opportunities in Eastern Europe: "The eastward expansion of the European Union won't be a success story for everyone. The winners will be businesses and large companies that will increase their profits ruthlessly by transferring German jobs to countries with cheap labor costs, because the average wage there is only 17 percent of what it is in Germany."