European expansion or Putin expansion?

But now the question of Europe's borders has become a staple of debate in the European Union. Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent threat to aim missiles at Ukraine highlights what is at stake in that debate's outcome.

The Wall's collapse in 1989 forced European Commission officials to dust off atlases to find places about which they knew little and cared less. Leon Brittan, then a commissioner and supporter of enlargement, recalls that some officials and countries even hoped that the pre-1989 line could be held. They felt that enlargement even to the Scandinavian and Alpine countries was going too far. Only in 1993 did the EU officially recognise that membership for all the former Soviet bloc countries could be a long-term goal.