“EU to Ask, What Is Europe?”

theTrumpet.com

"EU to Ask, What Is Europe?
WORLDWATCH: EUROPE
May 2006

Identifying Europe on a map might not be too difficult for anyone with a high school education. But try to identify where Europe ends, what its borders are, and you need an international summit.

Looming over a two-day summit of European Union leaders at the end of March in Brussels, Belgium, was the question of how big the EU can be allowed to get and who can join.

With the questions still looming, foreign ministers have scheduled an informal summit for May to assess “where Europe’s future borders lie,” according to the Netherlands’ Ben Bot (Associated Press, March 24). Bot told reporters, “One of the many questions Europeans ask is, ‘Are there no borders to the EU that should be fixed?’”

A German politician, claiming to speak for public sentiment across the Continent, stated just before last week’s conference that governments “must make clear where the borders of Europe are.” The politician is Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber, leader of the sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, whose career analysts pronounced dead when he rejected a seat in Merkel’s cabinet.

His comments on a radio program just before the summit sparked discussion on one of the most fundamental issues facing the EU: What is Europe?"