CONSIDER THIS: The share of the elderly in continental Europe is expected to grow from 17 to 31 percent between 2000 and 2050. A staggering one-half of all inhabitants on continental Europe will be 49 or older.

ENLARGEMENT: The EU will admit ten new member states in May, 2004: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. This enlargement will add 75 million people to the 400 million already living in the EU, but the increase of population by nearly 20% adds no more than 5% to the union's wealth. Expansion will add 23% to the EU's land area and create a combined economy of $9.3 trillion, approaching that of the U.S.

SECURITY: The EU has created a Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), a corps of 60,000 soldiers that are ready to deal with regional conflicts, humanitarian crises, and terrorism. This military force can be deployed on 60 days' notice and kept in the field for as long as a year. The RRF is unlikely to compete with NATO as the primary security force in Europe, because of the large military capabilities gap between EU member nations and the U.S., which provides much of the military backing to NATO.

MIGRATION: As many as 3m-4m people will migrate from central to western Europe in the 25 years after enlargement, about 1% of the present EU population. Roughly half of those will be workers. Based on past trends, at least half the migrants will head for Germany.

AND DID YOU KNOW?

• Up to 40% of gas imported to the EU comes and will come in the future from Russia. The EU candidate States have an oil dependence of 90-94% and gas dependence of 60-90%.
• Europe has 12 official languages, in order of number of speakers: German, French, Italian, English, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Gaelic.
• 16 of the world's top 25 countries in terms of GDP per capita are located in Europe. Europe has 7 of the top 25 richest countries in the world, in terms of total GDP.

FURTHER READING:

Articles:

Moravcsik, Andrew. "Striking a New Transatlantic Bargain." Foreign Affairs, July/August 2003.

Asmus, Ronald D. "Rebuilding the Atlantic Alliance." Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003.

Books:

Howorth, Jolyon, and John Keeler, eds. Defending Europe: The EU, NATO, and the Quest for European Autonomy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Kagan, Robert. Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. Knopf, 2003.

Kupchan, Charles. The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century. Knopf, 2002.

Vaughan-Whitehead, Daniel. EU Enlargement Versus Social Europe: The Uncertain Future of the European Social Model. Edward Elgar Pub, 2003.

Charemza, Wojciech et al, eds. East European Transition and EU Enlargement. Physica Verlag Publishing, 2002.

Walker, Alan. The Politics of Old Age in Europe (Rethinking Aging). Open University Press, 1999.

Websites:

www.europa.eu.int

www.coe.int

www.euobserver.com

www.unece.org/stats/trend/trend_h.htm