The Brunch Table

4/25/2004

Sorry, no second American century!

Filed under: — Nick @ 11:12 pm

Here’s a fascinating Guardian article about the logistic difficulties of conducting EU business in the language of all 25 member countries–simultaneously.

Once the new countries are let in on May 1st, according to Plastic, the EU will have more people than the U.S., a bigger GDP, and–most interestingly–a little more than half our military budget. (Considering that our military spending, not counting Bush’s wars, is about 2/3 commercial-tech R&D, that could actually work out to a larger standing army, if they can get the legalities of a common military hammered out.)

Man, the EU is really fixin’ to be a lovely place to sue for asylum.

  • http://www.articulatebabble.org vince

    Periodically I’ve mused taking advantage of my heritage and getting an Italian passport (I’ve looked up the rules, and unless they changed them, I qualify). Which would basically open up the right to live and work anywhere in the EU for me.

    The only thing holding me back (aside from my usual laziness) is the mandatory military service requirement in Italy. While I think I may be old enough now to skip it, the last time I checked Italy was still in the “coalition of the willing” and while that’s the case it seems to be a potential case of “out of the frying pan, into the fire.”

    In any case, and I wish I could find the article, I read something the other day that made the case that one side effect of Bush’s “you’re with us or against us” unilateralism is that the EU is rapidly trying to get its shit together. Getting everyone in the EU to agree on anything is very difficult. For example, the old Spanish government was holding up the new EU constitution. Well, that government changed, and now they support the constitution.

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