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I'm reviving this thread because two important events have occurred this week which relate to discussions we had earlier in this thread.
Less improtantly, the members of the French Socialist Party voted 59-41 to support the European constitution. That makes it unlikely that France will vote 'no' in its referendum, which would kill the constitution.
Probably more importantly for the future of Europe, the Ukrainian Supreme Court ruled that there should be a revote of the second round of the presidential election by 26 December. It now looks very likely that Viktor Yushchenko will be elected president of Ukraine and will lead the country towards the West.
A few months ago, haku wrote that the EU should never admit Ukraine and should accept that it is part of Russia's sphere of influence. I argued that if Ukraine wanted to join the EU, we should be prepared to let it in when it was ready.
There is an article in this week's edition of The Economist, 'The implications of a democratic Ukraine'. It talks about how France and Germany are appearently opposed to admitting Ukraine because if it was added after Turkey it would move the centre of gravity of the EU even further east. It also writes about how the objective of creating a single European welfare state is undermined by further expansion (too many countries at different levels of economic development) and how Ukraine would kill the Common Agricultural Policy (all those wheatfields). It concludes that just as the objective of a peaceful Europe requires expanding to include the Balkans (as the EU recognises), so it also requires expanding to strengthen freedom and democracy by incorporating the Ukraine. In a typical dig from The Economist, it comments that this is a more worthwhile objective than the Common Agricultural Policy or the working time directive.
I don't agree with The Economist very much (I'm actually fairly left-wing), but I think that they have a point here. I don't think that there's a logically consistent reason for the EU to expand to include the Balkans and not be prepared to include Ukraine.
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