Chapter 8 The EU: A Learning Model

One world at one step will be too big a step. For some one in Luxembourg, it will be relatively more convenient to locate Latvia on the map of Europe, but to search for Laos in Asia will be too much of a task. A man or a woman in Nepal can easily guess that Mongolia is somewhere in the continent of Asia, but he or she will have great difficulty in figuring out where Martinique is in South America. A citizen of Chad will have less problem in locating Burkina Faso on the map of Africa, but will struggle hard to find Brunei Darussalam in Asia. The message is simple and straightforward. The map of a continent is easily accessible, but the map of the world is much too large and relatively unfamiliar. Hence, the European Union (EU) covering the continent of Europe and its progress over the past half century toward successfully developing a framework of continental regionalization has become a learning model.