When I was a pupil at primary school, I got fascinated by the dichotomy of Europe created by the Iron Curtain. As a child, I found it incredibly sad that Eastern Europe could not be visited easily and that Eastern Europe citizens could not visit us very easily. (I found out later the former Yugoslavia was an exception to this rule.) Around the end of my university studies, a dream came true. The Iron Curtain opened and West Europeans could unite with East Europeans.
Only five years later in December 1994, the European
Young Engineers were born and I remember well how Hungarian young engineers
visited us soon after in Belgium. Last year I was very proud to see as a
founding member that our latest successors had succeeded in organising a
European conference in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia.
The eastern Balkan countries are perhaps the last countries
to join the European Union, although we can't know this for sure. Historically
the Balkan countries played a very important role in the Roman Empire, be it
that their distance to Rome was far less than their distance to Brussels. This
makes it hard for Balkan country Europeans to come to Brussels and it may lead at times to local frustrations about the decisions taken in faraway
Brussels. This frustration is certainly coming, but we should remain positive and
welcome this unexpected human
progress. Hope never dies.
Meanwhile, we were happy to receive last week two
delegations of academic staff of four Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia) on a seminar about space economy in our
beautiful town of Leuven.
I also refer to my blog Erasmus travels through Europe.
Afbeelding van Dimitris Vetsikas via Pixabay
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