Europe formally gets a whole lot bigger tomorrow. Ten new states from Cyprus to Estonia, Hungary to Poland are to be welcomed into the European Union. New members of the club hope for a shift away from old forms of discrimination, a shift from the difference between Eastern and Western Europe, between rich and poor, to what they imagine as a united continent no longer divided by the Cold War.
The older members of Club Europe remain somewhat nonplussed, worried that the carpets in Belgium and Paris will somehow be muddied by the boots of those from the East. It is also a change that the rest of the world needs to take account of. The folding away of the Iron Curtain, will soon enough open a window on an economically powerful new continent; a new Europe.
Guests:
Phillippe Le Corre, fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University;
Pavel Swieboda, head of European Affairs Department at Poland’s Foreign Office
Dariusz Rosiak, Polish writer and journalist;
Eszter Balazs, reporter for the Budapest Sun;