The new europe

SOME WOULD SAY that the "new" Europe the one coalescing in the aftermath of the Cold War - is really an old Europe reborn. It fulfills the geographer's definition of the continent as the landmass between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains in Russia; it includes nations that last appeared on maps more than a generation ago; it recognizes ethnic nationalities with roots planted deep in the past. It also incorporates the dream of a Europe united that has tantalized rulers from Charlemagne to the leaders of today.

Anchoring the continent is a core of 12 nations - the European Community (EC), whose members have been moving toward integration since World War II. Today, despite misgivings over a comprehensive union proposed by EC leaders, these countries are poised to join in a single market with free movement of goods, services, and people. Orbiting the EC are seven nations of the European Free Trade Association. They enjoy trading privileges denied so far to the impoverished countries of Eastern Europe, which have emerged from the long shadow of the Soviet Union but find themselves stalled at the fringes of the European economy. In between are Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland, former communist states that are reshaping their economies in anticipation of gaining EC associate status. As this new Europe strives toward a historic unity, it reverberates, with echoes from centuries past.

EPOPULATION

UROPE CONTAINS 684 million people-an average of nearly 170 people per square mile, more than twice the population density of the United States. Accordingly, the continent has become mostly urbanized: Three out of four Europeans live in cities or towns, and nearly every acre of land has been parceled out for human use or habitation. There is, however, wide fluctuation: in Belgium, the most urban nation in Europe, 95 percent of people live in cities, compared with only 33 percent in Portugal.

Concentrations are heaviest in the prosperous nations of Western Europe, where better health care has lowered infant mortality and pushed life expectancy toward 80 years.

Yet population growth has tapered off since the postwar baby boom and is expected to average about one percent a year till the end of the century. The highest growth rates are now found along the periphery of the continent, in such disparate countries as Albania and Ireland.

Immigration

THE TRICKLE of newcomers to Europe that began after World War II has become one of history's great floods - Algerians moving to France; Turks to Germany; Iranians to Sweden; Pakistanis, Nigerians, and Jamaicans to the United Kingdom; Indonesians to the Netherlands; Moroccans to Belgium. Most came to find work, while others were part of the so-called "silent invasion" of refugees seeking political asylum, mainly from conflict-ridden developing nations.

Today Europe is home to millions of non-Europeans who are classified as immigrants, guest workers, or asylum seekers. Germany, with almost six million foreigners on its books, is Europe's leading host, followed by France (nearly four million), Italy, and Switzerland (each with one million).

In most nations of Western Europe, where the labor pool is shrinking, these people fill an important niche, providing unskilled labour at low wages and boosting productivity. Yet the immigrants, many of them Muslims, often live as strangers in their adopted land and are easy scapegoats for critics who protest the cost of social services, crime, loss of jobs to immigrants, or the impact of things foreign on the fabric of their country.

All this tests Europe's traditional openness to newcomers. It also has led to much soul-searching within the European Community, which intends to eliminate border controls among its member nations on January 1, 1993 -meaning that immigrants, theoretically, could move unfettered from one EC country to another.

POPULATION SHIFTS

MORE THAN 12 million displaced persons were scattered across the face of the continent at the end of World War II. With the cold war division of Europe another 16 million of people - ethnic Germans called Volksdeutsche - were expelled from the Soviet bloc to the West. The rebuilding of postwar Europe began a trend that continues today as laborers from poorer regions - primarily around the Mediterranean Sea -seek work in the more industrialized north.

In recent months 2.5 m refugees have fled their homes in the war-torn republics of the former Yugoslavia.

LANGUAGES

SPREAD BY conquest and trade, the most widely spoken languages of Europe are thought to derive from a single parent tongue, proto-Indo-European, which probably originated in what is now southern Ukraine. Among its offspring are the Latin-derived Romance languages spoken by 185 million Europeans, including the French, Spaniards, and Italians; the Germanic languages (German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Yiddish, and others) spoken by nearly 200 million; and the Slavic languages spoken by some 227 million, including Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks. Unrelated languages are spoken by a small number of Europeans, including the Estonians, Finns, Hungarians, and Lapps.

With such diversity, it is now surprising that European languages have fostered national consciousness and worked against European unity - the EC itself has nine official languages. English is more frequently spoken by West Europeans (many of whom speak two or more languages) than in German, a tongue that travels widely throughout Eastern Europe.

From National Geographic

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