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50 years of EU expansion: Who’s in and who wants to join?

50 years of EU expansion: Who’s in and who wants to join?

PARIS: The European Union, which holds a summit with war-battered membership candidate Ukraine in Kyiv on Friday, has gone through several waves of expansion in the past 50 years.Four months after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine last year, the 27-nation bloc accepted Ukraine, along with its neighbour Moldova, as candidates in June 2022.The decision is the first step on the way to membership negotiations, which usually last years.But Ukraine is impatient. Ahead of the summit Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said that by staging the top-level meeting in Ukraine, Europe shows it “supports our rapid movement towards EU membership”.Several enlargements, one departureFounded in 1957, the European Economic Community (later renamed the EU) started out with six members -- Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany.In 1973, Britain, Denmark and Ireland joined, followed by Greece, Portugal and Spain in the 1980s.In 1995, the bloc began expanding eastwards, admitting Austri

The U.S. Sun, Benzer haberler