European Union adds 10 members

I know that Washington was driving its wedge between "old" and "new" Europe during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, certainly in an attempt to weaken the EU, and therefore the euro. I don't know whether this increase in the EU's community will actually strengthen it or weaken it in the long run. Hopefully the former. The world doesn't seem to work well with one superpower. At least not as long as it's us. But I don't think any country in our position would be any better. People with control over other people by and large tend to be ruthless and self-serving.

[A]s EU leaders hail their union's latest expansion as a historic triumph, they are also worried that it will be costly and might paralyze decision-making.

The move eastward and southward increases the bloc's population by 75 million, its territory by 25 percent but its gross domestic product by barely five percent.

The challenges the EU faces are to integrate these poorer countries, stay manageable with 25 states around the table and control immigration and organized crime as borders move east to adjoin former Soviet lands such as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

  Chosun Ilbo article