A Slovenian girl wears an EU flag as a hat near Kranjska Gora, at the border with Italy and Austria, on Friday. (Reuters)

Warsaw, April 30 (Reuters): Celebrations gathered pace today in the final countdown to the reunification of Europe 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall with the EU set to embrace 10 new mainly east European members at midnight.

Street parties, concerts and border festivities broke out across central and eastern Europe as political leaders hailed the final reversal of five decades of Soviet-dominated communist rule that followed World War Two.

Star-studded blue EU flags were to be hoisted and fireworks light the sky from the Baltic to the Mediterranean at midnight before leaders of the new 25-nation bloc, representing 450 million citizens, hold a celebratory summit in Dublin.

In Poland, by far the biggest of newcomers, outgoing Prime Minister Leszek Miller raised the EU flag and toasted Poland’s future in Europe at a televised ceremony with his cabinet, beating the official celebrations by eight hours. “Poland’s entry into the European Union fulfils my dreams and lifetime work,” Lech Walesa, whose Solidarity movement toppled communism in Poland in 1989, said.

For East Europeans, enlargement crowns 15 years of often painful economic reforms since the collapse of communist rule.

“For the generation that lived in the communist prison surrounded by barbed wire, the European Union is a dream come true. Fifteen years ago we would not even have dared dream this dream,” Slovakian parliament speaker Pavol Hrusovsky said.

EU enlargement takes effect at 2200 GMT, though a still divided Cyprus and the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will celebrate entry an hour earlier, since they lie in a time zone east of the bulk of continental Europe.

Other newcomers are former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia and the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta, which will become the EU’s smallest member with 400,000 people.

Ireland, a rags-to-riches model of the benefits of joining the EU, plans a “Day of Welcomes” for the newcomers tomorrow.