Amid the celebrations, illuminations and demonstrations marking the arrival of 10 new countries into the EU on Saturday, few will notice the day's significance for one of the most powerful areas of European policy.
May 1st sees the entry into force of the first major reform of EU competition policy for more than 40 years, drastically reducing bureaucracy and giving national competition authorities a bigger role in enforcing EU rules.
For the competition commissioner, Mr Mario Monti, the reform represents an exemplary decentralisation of activity away from Brussels, in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity, which says that decisions should be made as close to citizens as possible.
"I'm very keen on this reform because I see in it perhaps a first example of a new mode of governance in the European Union because it combines more application of community law relative to national law but done by involving less of the centre and more of the periphery. It is more respectful of subsidiarity, it reduces the bureaucratic burden and if this proves possible in one of those few areas which since the 1950's has been one of the core policy areas of the European Union then - a fortiori - I think it could be used in other policy areas," he said.
Mr Monti is in Dublin today to take part in a conference for European Competition Day, an event organised by the European Commission, the Competition Authority and Ireland's EU presidency.
After almost ten years in Brussels, Mr Monti is among the most experienced commissioners - and one of the most powerful. Charged with ensuring effective competition within the EU's common market, Mr Monti's task is to eliminate agreements that restrict competition between companies, such as price-fixing; to ensure that firms do not abuse a dominant position within the market; to control mergers; to liberalise sectors where there have been monopolies, such as telecommunications; and to make sure that state aid to business is in line with EU rules.
Until now, companies could notify the commission of any of their agreements they feared could restrict competition. Under the reform, such notification will no longer be possible - a change Mr Monti hopes will free up resources for the commission and national competition authorities to investigate wrongdoing.
"Both the commission and the national competition authorities will save resources which were devoted previously to the fairly dull work of processing mostly innocuous notifications and will be able to concentrate their resources on a more proactive competition policy, looking for cartels around Europe. Cartels were, of course, never notified in the past - they had to be discovered - and we will have more resources to do that," he said.
Most experts welcome the changes but some fear that national authorities - some of which are relatively inexperienced - will prove ineffective or could bow to political pressure. Mr Monti believes that peer pressure from other national authorities and from the commission will ensure that the rules are properly enforced.
"We are now putting in place a system which builds on something that was entirely absent in 1962 when the previous regulation was put in place. That is a culture of competition and case law - massive case law built up by commission decisions and of course court rulings," he said.
Mr Monti claims that the final beneficiary of EU competition law is the consumer, who benefits from lower prices and greater choice.
He insists that the commission's recent decision on subsidies from the Belgian authorities to Ryanair - which was the responsibility of the transport commissioner, Ms Loyola de Palacio - was consistent with this aim.
"It's a very interesting and revealing case because it puts these principles to a test. It was a difficult case because it really required a balancing of different aspects.
"Ryanair will be able to retain the greater part of the advantages so I don't think this is such a big deal from a quantitative point of view and it will certainly not call into question the low-cost airline model which has been of immense benefit to all air travellers and which the commission supported actively through the airline liberalisation of the 1990's. There wouldn't have been Ryanairs without this," he said.
Mr Monti acknowledges that many European citizens, as well as companies and governments, resent what they perceive as the commission's interference in their country's national life.
"European integration is an interference in the national life of a country, accepted - even more, asked for - by the member-states when they set up the community of six, when they successively entered into the community and then the union. So let's face it - this is the case.
"It is a deliberate decision that some activities should be conducted in view of some common interests, even though the specific manifestations of those powers may well not make national governments happy," he said.
Mr Monti claims that, despite their public protests, national ministers are often privately grateful to the commission for taking the blame for unpopular decisions. In the end, he claims, European integration shifts power towards individual citizens.
"Most advances of European integration are empowering citizens relative to lobbies, to powerful business groups, to abuses of power by national governments.
"In a sense, the Rome treaty, the Maastricht treaty all gradually displaced the borderline between state and citizens in favour of citizens and this is done through European integration. So it is perfectly normal that governments are not always happy with the commission's activity," he said.
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