by Stratfor
Financial Sense
The Brexit referendum and the fallout from it will be among the most heavily scrutinized themes of the next quarter. And though it may have been the most visible confirmation of the European Union’s disintegration, it was May 1, 2004, that sowed the seeds of London’s departure.
On that day, a day that came to be known, perhaps ironically, as the “Day of Welcomes,” the bloc admitted 10 countries — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta, and Cyprus — into its ranks. It epitomized an era of unprecedented EU expansion and honored the promise of prosperity that sold the European project to so many countries that were all too eager to buy it, particularly those that for decades had been bridled by the Soviet Union.