January 02, 2007

Romania & Bulgaria Join EU

Link: Romania, Bulgaria Revel in E.U. Status - washingtonpost.com.

Millions of Romanians and Bulgarians reveled in their first day as citizens of the European Union on Monday, after a night of fireworks and street parties celebrating their countries' entry into the bloc.

Deemed too politically and economically backward for membership during the E.U.'s first eastward expansion in 2004, the Black Sea neighbors were relieved to join in what political analysts say is likely to be the last enlargement this decade.

Their entry raises the E.U.'s membership to 27 states, almost half of them former communist countries that were largely cut off from Western Europe until 1989.

"Bulgaria's and Romania's accession to the E.U. completes our historic fifth round of enlargement, which peacefully reunified Western and Eastern Europe," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement of congratulations. The commission is the E.U.'s executive arm.

Romania, the larger of the two countries, and Bulgaria will together boost the E.U.'s population by 30 million, to 490 million, but will add just 1 percent to its economic output.

Once ruled by two of the Cold War's most hard-line governments, the pair stretch the E.U.'s borders from the Atlantic and Baltic in the west and north to the Black Sea in the southeast.

Posted by Anupam Chander on January 2, 2007 at 09:09 PM in Globalization | Permalink