The European Union is never quite as bad or quite as good as it looks. Last week’s summit on expansion was an example of the 27-nation union at its best – and its worst. A formula was found to enable agreement to open membership negotiations with Ukraine as it struggles to prevent Russia seizing more of its territory.
That agreement, which Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, had vowed to block, produced triumphant headlines that made the union look fleetingly as if it were finally grasping its historic responsibility to extend the European area of freedom and prosperity right up to Russia’s borders.
