20 years ago, on 1 May 2004, a special event marked the history of Europe: the fifth enlargement. Ten new countries joined the EU: Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. This event, known as the ‘Big Bang’, is the biggest enlargement in terms of people and number of countries, as well as new languages, with the number of official EU languages growing from 14 to 24.