Alaskan Bulgarian

EU Membership

Well, according to what I've been gleaning from Euronews and a few other very quiet sources lately, Bulgaria and Romania are trudging ever closer to a successful 2007 entry into the EU. Bulgarians--my students, their parents, my tutor--are even beginning to sound optomistic about the date. It could actually happen! Great for Bulgaria, great for the EU.

More interesting these days is the thought of Turkey beginning its talks next year and perhaps, in a decade, the EU forming a continuous economic body with a border hitting Georgia (!), Syria (!), and Iraq (!). If the EU was freaking about the Polish border with Ukraine, maybe it's time Brussels look ahead and help improve the situation with its probable future neighbors. If Iraq were going to be your neighbor in ten years, and you had the capacity to improve it if you'd just build some goodwill, wouldn't you want to do everything you can to make it better, even if it weren't immediately profitable?

Furthermore, I'd think that Europe would have a vested interest in making Syria less of a haven for terrorists, unless it wants Al Qaeda pouring through Turkey's currently sieve-esque borders and having a free, passport-less road into London, Paris, and Madrid. Europe might want to stop worrying about an adultery law that was just plain zany to begin with and start focusing on the long-term, life and death problems having Turkey as a neighbor will create.

The benefits of a European bridge direct to the Middle East will be incredible, but it'd be nice to see the EU have a hand in getting some of the problems out of the way first. Or they could sit around and complain about Muslims wearing religious apparel in schools and the American effort to introduce democracy into the countries they'll soon call the Joneses. I mean, really, would France and Germany really rather have had Saddam as an economic neighbor?...Wait, don't answer that.

Point is, whatever hard feelings most EU nations may have towards Bush and his desire to see right prevail, it's in their own, very personal, interest to get into Iraq and make it better, and to get diplomatically involved in Syria and make it better, and maybe even start sending some money Georgia's way. It'll be expensive, but nobody ever said expansion was cheap.