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Who is to join Europe in the near and further future? The question seems to become more and more unresolveable.

First, there is still the case of Turkey. Resistence against her accession to the EU is widespread, for different reasons. Many of them are more or less driven by fear of cultural diversity. "Who is afraid of the black man?" has its European parallel with "Hide! The Turks are coming!" This is one point of view, a Austrian, Hungarian, Italian, German point of view founded in their history. There is, indeed, another point of view on the same history to be read in Niels Kadritzkes article, first published in Le Monde diplomatique and also to be found at Eurozine reminding the reader of Western Europes colonial dreams regarding the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire:

If the "eastern question" had been answered by one of these alternatives -- quasi-colonial infiltration or Hellenization -- the question of whether or not Asia Minor was part of Europe would never have arisen. The Turkey of today would be the south-eastern extremity of the Old Continent. The key geographical focus -- the continental frontier at the Bosphorus -- would have become geopolitically irrelevant. And the Muslims of Asia Minor would of course have belonged to Europe. All the more so considering that half a million Balkan Turks, who were resettled in Anatolia in the course of the Greek-Turkish population exchange, would have remained in southern Europe. Asia Minor and the Balkans would have formed a huge tract of land whose Christian and Muslim roots would have changed nothing of its European character.

Secondly, there is the case of Croatia and her lost hope of joining the EU in 2007 together with Romania and Bulgaria. William J. Kole reports that more and more Croations become tired of Eu's disappointments. They do not believe any more that the hindrance of the soon membership is for the failure to capture Ante Gotovina who commited atrocities against Serbs in the war. "In Croatia, enthusiasm for EU membership is giving way to a feeling that the Gotovina issue is a ruse to keep it out of the club." Ther might very well be more reasons to keep Croatia waiting. Yet, the official reason (failure of capturing Ante Gotovina) is serious enough and should not be underestimated or done away with. Also Croatia should come to the point where dealing with history, also recent history (that might be still present), becomes a necessity from "inside". It should not be up to a "big brother" or the parents to tell "little Croatia" how to behave and whom to trust and whom not. Flowering tourism on sunny beaches and the refusal of remembering one's own "heroes" or "wicked warlords" are disconnected. Although, somewhere - I can't remember where - I read that tourism has the capacity to straighten democratic movements and in the most extreme case to bring down an undemocratic government. Well-well: good luck, this is too much investment of morality into the ordinary tourist.