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Home >> World
UPDATED: 14:40, June 25, 2004
Will French-German core change in enlarged EU ?
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The European Union (EU) will be taking 10 new members Saturday with 75 million new inhabitants to form an enormous entity of 25 states with 453 million people.

The EU started in 1951 by the coal and steel union signed by six European nations -- France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands -- in order to prevent any of them from working its mines and steel factories in the service of war against its neighbors again.

At the initiative of Jean Monnet, advisor to Robert Schuman whowas then French Foreign Minister, the Treaty of Rome was signed in1957 among the signatories of the coal union to form a European Economic Community, the precursor to today's EU.

The EU has grown to 15 members by 1993 when a far-reaching unified market was created in the union. Over the last 30 years, trade between EU members has been more than doubled as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) and more than 2.5 million jobs have been created as a direct consequence of the moreextensive opening of borders in 1993, according to the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies.

Since the euro was launched as a virtual currency on Jan. 1, 1999 in 12 of the 15 EU members, the EU has economically spoken with one voice, though it never reached its objective set since the 1950s to be a political unit with a united foreign and defensepolicy and with France and Germany as its heart.

The close Franco-German cooperation has so far been seen as a mechanism in many EU areas, said Heather Grabbe, deputy director of the London-based Center for European Reform.

The French-German motor started up notably after Gerhard Schroeder's nomination as German chancellor in 1998. The reconciliation between the two ancient enemies was completed by their refusal to back the Iraqi war led by the United States.

Wondering about the future of the EU after embracing the 10 newmembers, which are mainly ex-communist and pro-American nations from Eastern and Central Europe (most of them backed US action in Iraq war), France and Germany sought for British support to lead the alliance with a troika, which represents 40 percent of the inhabitants and almost half of economic entity of the enlarged EU,especially when France and Germany both exceeded the EU's budget deficit maximum of 3 percent of GDP in 2003.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met in February in Berlin for the second time in less than six months. In a joint letter to Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, current rotating chairman of the EU Council, and EU Commission President Romano Prodi, they called for sweeping reforms in innovation, employment and social welfare.

In an interview with Germany's DPA news agency two weeks beforethe bloc's historic May 1 expansion, Schroeder pointed out that a bigger EU would have to operate at two speeds in certain core areas such as the euro single currency, which operates in 12 of the 15 existing EU members, the Schengen no-borders zone, which takes in 13 states, and a common European defense policy being pioneered by Britain, France and Germany.

During an EU summit in Nice in 2000, Chirac, to whom Europe would be a counterweight to the United States, lobbied for the incoming members to have less voting weight than the current 15 states.

Things are also changing within the French-German core when theEU gravity shifts geographically for the benefit of Germany, whichwill be in the center of the enlarged EU, while France is pushed to the fringe.

Except for the economic gap between the original EU members andthe 10 new, diplomatic pressures from the United States and Russiawill also complicate France and Germany's leading role in the new EU, whose penchant is to be clarified.

Source: Xinhua

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