Stalin's Satellites Have Moved Into A Different Orbit. This article from the BBC's Angus Roxburgh is an artful paen to the EU project. Enlargement is just one of the many events that will allow pro-Euro media and politicans to argue the case for our manifest destiny among the bubbly new Europeans.

Unfortunately for that, it's always the negative arguments that get Europhiles worked up most.

In this article we are told that the EU is not like the USSR, therefore it must basically be good-

'It's against this background - of colonial rule, oppression, resentment, and liberation - that entry into the EU has to be seen.'

From this we can learn that the EU is not colonial or oppressive, and symbolises liberty. Huh? It may not be colonial (a term that could use some definition) but its attitude to the sovereignty of democratic nation states is to say the least questionable. It doesn't lose a lot of sleep over failed referenda, and its means of operation can be very very close to coercive. Remember how, for Chirac, Poland 'lost a good opportunity to keep silent' over Iraq? A nice soundbyte for a 'democrat' I don't think. Notice also how one of the EU's raisons d'etre is to be anti-colonial. This neatly skewers a whole variety of nationalists in major countries (UK, Fra. Ger. etc) on the same 'failed' status as Russia, even though the Soviet Russian Empire was greatly different to any other during that period, except perhaps the short-lived Nazi empire.

The new nations, apparently, know that 'Their influence on Brussels decision-making may end up small, but at least their voice will be heard, not brutally silenced.'. If you take out the word 'brutally', however, as being unlikely in the short term, you are faced with a likely scenario for many smaller countries.

They are also a natural part of 'Europe': 'Prague, Bratislava and Budapest were mainstream European cities, part of "Mitteleuropa", '- but part also, it should be said, of the Habsburg empire of the tyrant Metternich, though this we are not told. Metternich said that he considered his empire 'a geographical necessity'. According to the linked source, 'He created the illusion of the ‘necessity’ of Austria at the Congress of Vienna, the illusion of a ‘system’ which could control European events'.

Back with Roxburgh: he says of the new entrants that 'they are likely to prove much more enthusiastic "Europeans" than many of the people in the existing EU states'. This is probably undeniable, but Roxburgh, lost in his fog of idealism, fails to nail the real reason for that. Membership will create massive job opportunities for their young people over the next ten years- as living standards and wages become somewhat realligned. The entrance of Eastern Europe into the EU is overwhelmingly and understandably about money, not Euro-enthusiasm. You could easily question whether such opportunities could not have been secured in bi-lateral treaties a number of years ago, were it not for the demands of the EU project.