An Oasis

United States of Everywhere

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Israel weighing EU membership and the CATO Institute document, "Iraq and Israel in the EU: Peace through Accession?" are interesting...

Interesting like you know when you read something and instinct makes you physically contort your face and audibly say, "whaaaaaat?"

In principle I think this is a good idea, along with a host of neighbouring, or soon to be neighbouring, countries including Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, the Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine (or the Palestinian Authority), Syria, Tunisia. Once they integrate then we can move on to a whole new raft of neighbours in ever increasing circles. It is already apparent in the EU that there are some pretty sizeable differences of opinion on current EU competencies like Agriculture & Fishing - perhaps further widening would effectively rule out any further pooling of powers. The process of drawing up an EU Constitution will result in a wider awareness of the parameters of our Union and an easier understanding of how it can develop in the future.

At the moment about the only thing that holds the EU together is geography (and that is about as crap a reason for excluding people as exists), but when we dilute that then what is Europe then about? Shared culture? Shared history? Or is a shared future, open markets and shared humanity enough?

Posted by Paul at June 23, 2003 05:52 AM |