Maximus Zeebra

With the accession of Romania and Bulgaria into the European Union, our community now consist of 27 member nations.

The last 10 to join from eastern Europe and Cyprus has since they started introducing EU laws long before they joined enjoyed enourmous growth in wealth. Everything from 4% in huge poland to 10% in small Estonia.

The two new member states, the poorest ever to be accepted into the European Union will bring the European Union population from 463 million people to 493 million people. They contribution to the overall product of Europe will hardly be noticed where they will only contribute from an increase from 10.8 trillion € to 10.9 trillion €. The GDP per capita of the European Union will therefor slightly fall from 23326€ per capita to 22109€ per capita.
This means that in dollar terms(at todays exchange rate) the GDP of Europe will be 14 trillion 446 billion dollars. Or almost 14.5 trillion dollars.

So what will these two newcomers bring to the comminity except poverty and a lot of things to fix and contribute money to?
Both Bulgaria and Romania have a young and relatively well educated work force that will help Romania and Bulgaria get back on their feet. It will strengten their national pride and their national feeling, but will also remind them and Europe, that the European Union is a great thing. Romania might be known for their "hackers" as with Brazil and Russia, but if we utilize their power, Europe can gain a lot from their heavy software knowledge, and perhaps create a much better and much larger software industry.
Bulgaria on the other hand is already a pretty good vacation destination, and will probably pin much of their growth to tourism..

Its a pleasure to see these two countries join the community and it will be a pleasure to see what changes they will makes and what they will bring to our common European future.

Maximus Zeebra

EUobserver.com

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PeteEU

Not too happy about adding these 2 countries as I think it was way to early. I just how that the rest can keep the pressure on said countries to among other things, fight organised crime which has run rampant since the fall of the wall. The scary thing is that both countries are in a worse state economically than Spain and Portugal and Greece were when they entered around 2 decades ago and they were in a baddd state at the time.. but now well.

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PeteEU

GarzaUK

I've been to Bulgaria twice and half the country is run by the Russian mafia, but it could have changed since then.

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They tried like hell. They called him an élitist, a radical, a socialist, a Marxist, a Muslim, an Arab, an appeaser, a danger to the republic, a threat to small children, a friend of terrorists, an enemy of Israel, a vote thief, a non-citizen, an anti-American, and a celebrity. ~ George Packer

Maximus Zeebra

That might be so, but it doesnt stop Brits or northern Europeans from going there on vacation. The problems and poverty is overwhelming, but its a beautiful country and it could turn into a good country with time..