Some of them are tainted by war
crimes. Others are addicted to donor conferences. Yet others are
travesties of the modern nation state having been hijacked and
subverted by tribal crime gangs. Most of them combine all these
unpalatable features.
Many of these countries possess the dubious distinction of having once
been misruled by the sick man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire. In a
moment of faux-pas honesty, Valerie Giscard D'Estaing, the chairman of
the European Union's much-touted constitutional convention, admitted
last week that a European Union with Turkey will no longer be either
European or United. Imagine how they perceive the likes of Macedonia,
or Albania.
As the Union enlarges to the east and south, its character will be
transformed. It will become poorer and darker, more prone to crime and
corruption, to sudden or seasonal surges of immigration, to
fractiousness and conflict. It is a process of conversion to a truly
multi-ethnic and multi-cultural grouping with a weighty Slav and
Christian Orthodox presence. Not necessarily an appetizing prospect,
say many.
The former communist countries in transition are supposed to be
miraculously transformed by the accession process. Alas, the indelible
pathologies of communism mesh well with Brussels's unmanageable,
self-perpetuating and opaque bureaucracy.
Pages:
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86