For former Western Europe, the year 2004 changed everything, and so (to use one of the favourites in the communist vocabulary) quite irreversibly: The European Union, that had been so far a mere West European club (if one accepts the bloc-free and socialist-leaning countries of Sweden, Finland, and Austria as Western nations, in the first place), saw its first big enlargement deep into the still-communist East, from 15 to 25 member states. Malta and Cyprus aside, 3 “former” Soviet republics and 5 “former” communist satellites joined the EU, immediately changing the whole fabric …
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