Atlanta will mark Europe Day this year on May 9 in style with the ambassadors to the United States of France and Germany visiting to celebrate the European Union’s achievements and to discuss its future.

France’s ambassador Jean-David Levitte and Germany’s ambassador Klaus Scharioth are both returning to Atlanta for “A Dialogue on Europe,” to be hosted by the Southern Center for International Studies and to be held at the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead.

Mr. Levitte has been here often, on occasion to “knight” individuals who have advanced French-U.S. relations as well as to support the unprecedented Louvre-Atlanta tie, a three-year relationship between the Louvre Museum in Paris and the High Museum of Art here.

Dr. Scharioth also has visited recently, invited by the German-American Chamber of Commerce to underscore the important economic relations binding the Southeast and Germany.

But as Europe celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European community with West Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries being the first signatories, the EU has changed dramatically since 1957.

It now has 27 members, not six. While France and Germany held the predominant voices in the past, new voices are expressing themselves dramatically in providing a vision for the EU’s future.

Most recently, Ireland’s president, Mary McAleese, visited Atlanta and shared her opinion that Europe should collaborate closely with the U.S. Such a relationship would be in keeping with the close bond achieved between Ireland and the U.S. that has been critical for Ireland’s transformation from a poor to a wealthy nation, she said. GlobalAtlanta’s account of her visit is in this week’s “Top Stories” section.

An interesting juxtaposition of views include those of John Bruton, the EU’s ambassador to the U.S. and the former prime minister of Ireland, with those of Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic since 2002.

While in Atlanta Mr. Bruton expressed his desire to see Europeans developing a closer, more unified loyalty to Europe. On the other hand, Mr. Klaus expressed an opposite view.

On a visit to Birmingham, Ala., he underlined his distrust of the “supranational” institutions forcing individual European countries to adopt regulations and attitudes that, he said, hurts the national initiatives and personal loyalties to individual nations such as his country.

Meanwhile, France’s trade minister, Christine Lagarde, came to Atlanta to seek out partners in advancing the world’s technologies and deepening the substantial economic ties binding Georgia to the EU.

To find out more about the event at the Atlanta History Center, which is being supported by the Commission of the European Union and the Halle Foundation, call Tamuna Liluashvili at (404) 261-5763 or send an email to tamuna@scis.org.