The implications of EU enlargement for a multicultural European agency like the OHIM are manifold, involving significant changes in areas relating to Community trade mark and design procedures, to existing legislation, to the Office's language regime and to its staff recruitment policy among others.
The New Year's Day celebrations marking the arrival of Bulgaria and Romania into the new EU family of twenty-seven signified a new beginning for nearly thirty million citizens from these two countries, but for the OHIM it also marked the end of a long road in preparatory activities which commenced as far back as July 2004.
It was at this time, just two months after the European Union welcomed on board ten new Member States in its biggest enlargement process ever, that the Office implemented the “road map towards the 2007 enlargement”.
