At 50, EU’s grand vision is blurry

[LiberalFighter]

Source: Ft Wayne Journal Gazette (Originally LA Times)

Founded as an economic pact by six Western European capitals after World War II, the EU has 27 member states, a population of nearly 500 million and an economy that is as large, but not as strong, as that of the United States. It has loosened borders, calmed nationalist sentiments that had inspired centuries of bloodshed and introduced a single currency.

Despite these achievements, the EU is viewed by many people as an aloof, bureaucratic oddity that prattles on in a maze of buildings at its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Its members still bicker over a constitution, and although it has many lofty treaties, the EU is often powerless to force countries to follow its mandates, such as getting Germans to ease up on the gas.

Yet the organization is at the diplomatic center of the continent’s most pressing issues: absorbing former Soviet bloc nations, widening trade with Asia, forming defense and energy policies, trimming the welfare state, integrating a growing Muslim population, improving relations with Washington and keeping Russia, with its dominance of oil and gas markets, as an economic partner.

Read more: http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/16971001.htm