Is the E.U. America’s Friend or Foe? - by John Blundell for the Conservative US Heritage Foundation
The European Union now stretches from the Latvian–Russian border in the east to Galway Bay on the west coast of Ireland, and from the Arctic wastes of Finland and Sweden in the north to Cyprus in the south. The E.U. has a population of 454 million. This means that the E.U. now has a population more than 50 percent larger than that of the United States. And with Romania and Bulgaria joining on January 1, 2007, another 30 million will take that to 484 million.
It was taken for granted by the USA that the emerging European Union would share America's core values. The reality is quite different. As this hugely ambitious but flawed project has taken shape, policy differences between Europe and the U.S. have both multiplied and deepened. Recent differences between the E.U. and the U.S. include those over Iraq, Palestine, Iran, ballistic missile defense, the international criminal court, genetically modified crops, the Kyoto accords, farm support, China, Taiwan, Cuba, the death penalty, as well as a whole raft of trade issues. Indeed, while it is possible to name individual European political leaders who genuinely like and admire America, it is difficult to think of a single major issue on which the U.S. and the E.U. hold identical views.
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