A rchive Date
[ 05-05-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ European Union ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Edmonton/Paul_Stanway/2004/05/05/447154.html
Ghosts of Yalta are finally laid to rest
By PAUL STANWAY -- For the Edmonton Sun
When future historians are through with it, the expansion of the European Union into the world's biggest political unit - 25 countries and 455 million people - will likely be seen as a watershed event. Yet it received only passing coverage in the Canadian media, which says a lot about our changing view of the world and our place in it.
A generation ago there remained some sense of Canada's European roots, a shared culture and history - but we no longer seem to know or care much about the Old World.
CBC's Sunday Report managed to reduce the story to a piece of hand-wringing over the plight of Europe's gypsies. You could almost hear the remote controls clicking as people fled to the nearest Simpsons rerun.
No slight intended to gypsy readers, but the story was the dismantling of an artificial barrier that had divided Europe for six decades, and the righting of a historic wrong that became the central fact in the lives of countless Canadians of eastern European origin, who either fled here as a result of the partitioning, or were effectively cut off from family and friends for most of their lives.
As the Second World War came to a close, the victorious Allies met in the resort town of Yalta, on the Black Sea, and, to appease the Soviets, agreed to carve Europe into east and west. It's not difficult to understand why the war-weary Allies wanted to avoid conflict with the Soviets, but the asking price was the liberty of millions of our wartime Allies who were condemned to a lifetime of Stalinist oppression.
Last weekend the ghosts of Yalta were finally laid to rest.
Of the 10 countries joining the EU on May 1, eight - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - were bringing to an end a tragic, six-decade-long nightmare. (The Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus were the other two).
At midnight on Saturday, fireworks lit up the sky from Prague to Lisbon, followed by rock concerts, church services and political speeches celebrating the expansion of a united Europe. The final political ceremony was held in Dublin, which seemed appropriate since no country has benefited more from EU membership than Ireland.
Most North American media coverage of the EU expansion concentrated on the real challenges it presents: the new members are less prosperous than the existing group, and most are fledgling democracies. Yet for all the things it manages to screw up, through bureaucracy and political meddling, the EU has a surprisingly good record of turning basket cases into success stories.
A generation ago Ireland, Spain and Portugal were economic backwaters, written off by most cynics as beyond help. They were predicted to become black holes into which billions of EU tax dollars would disappear, with nothing to show for the effort.
Well, guess what?
Spain and Portugal are more prosperous than at any time in their recent histories, and Ireland has become the poster boy for the new economy - the Celtic economic tiger! When Spain joined the EU in 1986, a mass exodus of job seekers was predicted. But over the next decade there was actually a net in-flow of people as hundreds of thousands of Spaniards returned home to take advantage of an economic boom.
With labour cheaper in eastern Europe, economic development seems certain, which might encourage western Europe to tackle its own productivity issues. EU aid for the 10 new members is estimated at $8.5 billion next year. It's a lot of money, but it will barely make a dent in the union's half-trillion-dollar budget.
So what? Well, even if we don't care about the history or the politics, we might spare a thought for the economic impact of the European behemoth.
The EU, not Canada, is now America's largest trading partner, and - as the Wall Street Journal noted this past week - U.S. business people outnumber U.S. tourists in cities like Prague, Warsaw and Budapest.
Do they know something we don't? Do we even care?
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