01/09/2009 (Agence Europe) - On 1 September the acting president of the European Council, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, took part in a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War at the Westerplatte fort in Gdansk. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Polish Prime Minister Lech Kaczunski and his country's Prime Minister Donald Tusk, also took part. In a declaration published on behalf of the EU27, the Swedish Presidency stressed that this war had “taught Europe and its citizens a very painful lesson: how fragile peace between nations is and how much solidarity and effort is needed to preserve it”. The Presidency also paid homage to the six founding countries of the EU which, by signing the treaty establishing the ECSC in 1951, “forged the process of European integration by giving priority to what unites rather than divides”. The Presidency stressed: “We have a duty not to let the memory of the experience of this most terrifying of all wars fall into oblivion”. (H.B./transl.rh)