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10/18/09

SFGate: The European Union - the new sleeping giant? - by Joel Brinklley

For the complete report from the SFGateclick on this link/a>

The European Union - the new sleeping giant? - by Joel Brinklley

The United States is about to confront a fierce new competitor unlike any the nation has faced in its history.The vote in Ireland this month to approve the Lisbon Treaty, intended to streamline and strengthen the European Union, might have seemed like an interesting, parochial European development. But think about what it portends. Today, Europe is a largely ineffectual player in world affairs. European states rotate the EU presidency, and for most non-European nations, the tenure of each new president is largely invisible. But what happens when the EU elects a full-time president with a five-year term, as the treaty stipulates. (Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, is the front-runner.) The European Union then would seem almost like the United States, a collection of states forming a cohesive union with a common foreign policy - and a single, prominent president who will immediately become an important player in the world.

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