Six months ago, when 10 new states joined the European Union (EU), the lifting of trade and political barriers enlarged the world’s largest borderless marketplace to 450 million people. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta joined the existing 15 member states on May 1. In 2007 Bulgaria and Romania are likely to join the EU, with Croatia and Turkey to follow eventually. Such enlargement will increase the EU’s population to more than half a billion people.
With largely youthful and well educated populations, the Eastern and Southern European countries concerned offer Western companies (including those from North America) a major new source of customers and–perhaps more significantly in the short-term–of relatively inexpensive labor. But their own business communities are far from passive and they are fast expanding their trade horizons across the now defunct borders.
