Przedstawiciele państw europejskich na wystawie '45. Koniec wojny w 45 eksponatach.
On 7 May 2015 leaders of European states arrived in Gdańsk at the invitation of the Polish President, Bronisław Komorowski, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. They viewed the exhibition organised by our Museum and participated in a debate.
Photos taken during that event are now available in the photo gallery.
17 representatives of states and institutions took part in the debate. Among them were presidents of Poland — Bronisław Komorowski, Bulgaria — Rosen Plevneliev, Croatia — Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, Cyprus — Nikos Anastasiadis, the Czech Republic — Miloš Zeman, Estonia — Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Lithuania — Dalia Grybauskaite, Romania — Klaus Iohannis, Ukraine — Petro Poroshenko, and also the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, the former President of Germany, Horst Köhler, the Speakers of the Spanish and Latvian parliaments, the Deputy Speaker of the Hungarian parliament and the French Minister of Defence. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon and the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, were also present at the monument by the European Solidarity Centre.
The subject matter of the debate was European integration and the contemporary significance of the lesson learned from the Second World War. The motto was a quote from a document that is remembered in history as the Schuman Declaration (9 May 1950): “A united Europe was not achieved and we had war.” Written by Robert Schuman, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, it proposed shared coordination of steel and coal production to the European partners. The first supranational European institution in history, the European Coal and Steel Community eventually developed into the European Union.
