Brazil and the Benefits of Club Membership
The possible death throes of Greece’s membership of the Euro should not detract from the union’s core attractions. The forerunner of today’s European Community (EC), the European Economic Union (EEC) was set up as a trade body in 1958 to strengthen the economic and social ties across a violent and dysfunctional continent. Its two key members, France and Germany, had fought each other three times over the previous seventy-five years: it was reasoned that drawing both countries and their outliers together in a web of trade would allow for a more prosperous and peaceful continent. It’s worked and yet hand in hand with its enlargement, its ambitions have also expanded.…