REAGAN BABIES:

The EU's growing pains: East Europeans are forcing a reappraisal (Graham Bowley International Herald Tribune)

[The new EU countries of Central and Eastern Europe] have taken over Europe's economic agenda, forcing a stronger focus on low taxes, liberalization and competition. They affected the cogs and gears of the Brussels institutional machine Tuesday, when several new countries opposed Germany's attempt to water down the EU's Stability and Growth Pact amid fears that it would undermine the euro.

These young former Soviet bloc nations have also promoted a new muscularity in European foreign policy, especially toward Russia. And they have caused the EU to finally confront the question about what sort of entity it will be: a political state, or a looser body whose main preoccupation is trade and economic growth and spreading democracy around its borders.

It could at least buy Europe a few more years before oblivion.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 9, 2005 7:28 AM