Final Word from Friday, December 20, 2002
The International Herald Tribune reported earlier this month that the U.S. is the big winner in EU enlargement, because entry of the essentially pro-American countries of Central and Eastern Europe will help it to increase its influence within Europe. Ten days later, the IHT said that new EU members will only get a fourth of the money they had been expecting. One must remember, said Nigel Dingley of Tesco, that the IHT is an American paper and that the U.S. would not be too concerned if there were hiccups on the road to enlargement because of the challenge a stronger EU would pose to it. Another reader suggested that, for this same reason, the U.S. might not be so sad if Václav Klaus succeeded Václav Havel as president. Klaus, the reader noted, is one of the few Czech politicians whose criticism of the Copenhagen summit has been more than just domestic political infighting.