Tomorrow’s World: The Death and Resurrection of the European Union?

The Death and Resurrection of the European Union?

By Tomorrow’s World News Bureau

Will the present economic distress push the European Union to its breaking point? If so, what will emerge in its place?

Reeling from the ruinous effects of World War II, European leaders in the late 1940s had come to realize that peace on the continent could not persist unless the powerful nations of France and Germany were drawn into closer economic and political alliance. On May 9, 1950, French foreign minister Robert Schuman laid the foundation for the last half-century of European integration when he issued what is now called the “Schuman Declaration.” In part, it states:

Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity. The coming together of the nations of Europe requires the elimination of the age-old opposition of France and Germany. Any action taken must in the first place concern these two countries.

To speed this process, Schuman proposed that the coal and steel industries of France and Germany be placed under a single supranational governing authority. Schuman’s proposal led in April 1951 to the Treaty of Paris, in which six European states came together in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). France and West Germany joined Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in an economic union that would set the pattern for future European financial and political unification.

For centuries, such European unity had proved elusive, as dynastic struggles for supremacy kept bloody warfare the prime occupation of competing rulers. Although a few rare country-level unions had been achieved—such as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the Austro-Hungarian empire, which reigned in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—larger European nation-states were for the most part loath to surrender sovereignty to any international power.

Six years after the ECSC was formed, its nations signed the Treaties of Rome on March 25, 1957 to form two other supranational organizations—the European Atomic Energy Community and the European Economic Community—then in 1967 the three European communities merged into a single entity that many regard as the real beginning of the modern European Union.

Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined in 1973. During the 1980s, Greece, Spain and Portugal were added. In 1995, Austria, Finland and Sweden brought European Union membership to 15. With the demise of the Soviet Union, many former Russian satellite nations sought admittance into the EU, and ten new members were added in 2004: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The addition of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 brought total EU membership to 27 nations.

For years, countries flocked to the EU in hopes of strengthening their troubled national economies. But now the honeymoon is over! The current world economic crisis has wrought financial havoc, particularly among EU inductees from Eastern Europe, which threatens to bring down the euro along with the European banking system that had so heavily invested in the former Soviet-bloc nations. Last week, officials from Germany—the strongest country in the EU—cast doubt on a possible bail-out for the weaker EU economies to the east.

As the eastern half of the EU drowns in financial red ink, and comes closer to defaulting on loans from its wealthier EU partners to the west, will the present 27-nation union disintegrate? Will there emerge a need for a new economic entity to deal with the crisis now gripping Europe?

Bible prophecy reveals important details about the political entity that will rule Europe shortly before the return of Jesus Christ. “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast" (Revelation 17:12-13). These “horns” represent individual nations or regional blocs that together will form a single economic and military powerhouse that will astound the world (Revelation 13:4)! To learn more about this final end-time resurrection of the ancient Roman Empire, read our informative booklet, The Beast of Revelation

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