US asleep as EU expands its membership eastward

DPA , WASHINGTON
Sunday, May 02, 2004,Page 7

"I think most Americans don't understand and are not interested in European Union enlargement."

Marian Tupy, assistant director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty at the Cato Institute

When retired US diplomat Wayne Merry was in Europe recently, newspapers were brimming with debate over issues arising from the EU's imminent enlargement.

On his return to Washington, where he studies European integration at a think tank, the EU's expansion to 10 new member countries from eastern and southern Europe was "scarcely mentioned" in the US media.

Americans are largely unaware of the EU's formal admission yesterday of Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Merry, though, makes his living thinking about the EU as a senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council, one of the US capital's many private policy institutes.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/05/02/2003153837

Don't worry, Sinclair Broadcasting tells us the only important things we need to know!

it will consume more resouces than the usa and will be a new source of labor and capital in the eastern countries that have a much lower standard of living,etc,etc. the united states is now odd man out in the grand design of things. someday very soon the people of the united states will wake up and realize how far we have fallen...

with us against all the "chocolate making" Old Europe EU countries! What gives! Richard Perle said this wasn't supposed to happen!

real or imagined red state versus blue state ideological divide may yet undo the US. The Bush Administration's "manly" unilateralism, appalling tax cuts for the rich, and tremendous war debt is the economic equivalent of a simultaneous heroin, cocaine, and morphine binge.

Meanwhile, old and new Europe are patiently waiting us out, knitting together a nice economic and social protection net.

Are we stupid or what?