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Should the EU allow Turkey to join as a new state?  That Turkey is overwhelmingly not in Europe and does not have a European culture are cited by those arguing against it.   Of course, not every state of the European Union has to be in Europe.  The USA has Hawaii even though the islands are far from America.  However, Hawaii has a westernized culture and is a small state in the American Union, whereas Turkey is Islamic and Middle Eastern and is huge in comparison with most EU states.   100 million people  is more than Deutschland (80 million)…so turkey would be the largest state peoplewise.  I don’t think it would be very wise to have a non-European state/culture being your largest state. it would be a sort of hypertrophy.  (good word to look up)  It is the EUROPEAN Union, afterall.  To compromise the European Union as a means to gaining leverage in the middle east is in my view rather short-sighted and not really in the Europeans’ interest.
As I see it, the primary reason for both the US and EU is to forestall war between the states within and to provide a defense against foreign threats.  I know the economic threats (and power) is though to be primary in the case of the EU, but I would go back to the speeches in the early 1950s by Jean Monnet and even Churchill on the primary need to avoid another world war sourced in Europe.  The early iron and coal cooperative between six states was geared to preventing Germany from re-militarizing primarily…economics being secondary.  The EEC was built onto this High Authority and the economic has been thought to be the dominant rationale.  Not to discount the benefits of a common market; the US has def benefited from one.  But I would argue that the EU’s mission is not primarily economic, but rather to prevent war within Europe.  This is why I think still more power should go to the EU, but not so much that it consolidates like another union that  I won’t mention.

The European Union has a common market. This would seem to be news to The Wall Street Journal. This is not to say that the E.U. <em>is </em>a common market.  For instance, the union has governmental institutions, including a parliament, a senate (the European Council), an executive branch (the Commission), and a supreme court (the ECJ).  So it is surprising when journalists forget that the E.U. even has a common market—treating each of the States as having its own economy.  To be sure, regions of the E.U. perform differently economically.  In the U.S., the States in the Northeast and California tend to produce more than say South Carolina and Iowa.  Therefore, I contend that The Wall Street Journal errs in applying the concept of contagion to the E.U. financial crisis of 2010.  A contagion occurs “when a loss of market confidence in one economy transmits to others.” It can occur through trade connections, economic similarities, and financial linkages. There are no “trade connections” within the E.U. because there is a common market within its borders—the E.U.’s borders, that is.  Economic similarities and financial linkages naturally exist within an economy; they need not evince contagion.  In terms of the E.U. States that are variously suffering from budget deficits, high government debt and low growth, both the problems and solutions can be viewed in systemic terms with respect not only to the state governments, but also to the EU in terms of its common market and governance. Reducing the E.U. to its States misses this point and is antiquated.  Beyond the financial matters in the E.U., the reporting thereon evinces a problem in itself—that of being excessively rooted in “the same old, same old” at the expense of a changing world.  In other words, our perspectives seem to have a nasty habit of being too sticky or rigid, and this is a problem that may dwarf those facing the E.U.

Source: Tom Lauricella, “Fears of Domino Effect Pervade Europe,” The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2010, pp. C1-2