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- April 1, 2013, Vol 7, No 4

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History in the making: Is Europe more divided than ever?

by Richard Fleming

Europe used to be an east/west sort of place, and you knew where you were — you were west or you were east of what was then more or less a fixed, impervious border. Times have changed. Now it has become a north/south kind of place, where the Iron Curtain has twitched away to the scrapyard and haberdashery in the sky and where it’s slightly more difficult to work out whether you’re north or whether you’re south.

Other ways of dividing Europe don’t help matters — European Union (EU)/not EU, euro zone/not euro zone, Schengen/not Schengen, old/new, rich/poor, enlightened/unenlightened, developed/emerging, core/peripheral, growth/no growth, low tax/high tax, high unemployment/even higher unemployment, low risk/high risk, good credit rating/bad credit rating, social/market, dirigiste/laissez-faire.

You can probably think of more, like hot/cold, wet/dry, sandy beach/rocky foreshore or knowingly eat horsemeat/unwittingly eat horsemeat, and of ways of allocating the

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