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EU leaders to meet in Flanders to commemorate WWI

11 March 2014, 12:39 CET
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(BRUSSELS) - European Union leaders will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I on June 26, as they open a European Council meeting in Flanders, officials said.

European Council President Hermann Van Rompuy announced on Tuesday the two-day meeting will kick-off in Ypres, the Belgian town forever linked with the bloodiest trench warfare of the conflict, and will include a ceremony at the towns' war memorial, Menin Gate.

The event will mark the anniversary of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which led European powers into a war which lasted until the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.

Over nine million soldiers were killed in the course of the war, although the horrors and heroism of the trenches have often been overshadowed in some European countries by the destruction of World War II.

The lack of a single European event marking the Great War's centenary reveals how differently the warring parties remember the conflict, with those on the winning Allied side more enthusiastic than Germans to mark the war.


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