The new EU goes back to work this week with 25 members, and the long-term economic consequences of its historic enlargement could prove greater than the continent's political reunification.
The EU is now a market of 455 million people, more than half again the size of the US, putting the EU third behind China and India.
With a comparable GDP last year of 9.746 trillion euros (US$11.7 trillion), according to the EU's statistics unit Eurostat, the union now rivals the US as the world's largest economy, though the latter is growing faster.
The 10 new EU members -- Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia -- have added 20 percent to the bloc's population, but only 5 percent to GDP.
Their economies are nonetheless forecast to grow by an average 4 percent this year, more than twice the 1.7 percent estimate for older EU members, and the new states hope to follow the Irish "Celtic Tiger" in using union development funds to catch up with the pack.
Eight of the countries are former communist countries, and the 15 years of painful restructuring they have gone through to join the EU has in turn drawn foreign direct investment of US$126 billion between 1993 and 2002.
The leaner economic models should help maintain investment rates, which have weakened recently but are forecast to increase by 5.75 percent this year and by 7.25 percent next year.
That should spur EU growth, and could also come at the expense of the US, which must continue to attract massive amounts of foreign investment to fund its record budget and current account deficits.
European enlargement has resulted in another fundamental change.
The EU now shares a common border with Russia and is becoming a dominant factor in Moscow's economic calculations.
The Wall Street Journal quoted President Vladimir Putin's special EU advisor Sergei Yastrzhembsky last week as saying the EU will account for 53 percent of Russia's foreign trade and a third of foreign direct investment, in both cases more than the US.
For its part, EU industry is hungry for Russian natural resources, setting the stage for agreements that should bind them closer together.
On Tuesday, the EU and Russia renewed their Partnership and Cooperation Accord (PCA), extending existing political and economic ties to the 10 new EU members.
Renewal of the accord should help further talks on Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
Meanwhile, China's relations with the EU are at an all-time high, according to Chinese officials and the EU ambassador to China, Klaus Ebermann.
Last year, China overtook Japan to become the EU's second largest trading partner -- after the United States -- while the EU is China's third largest.
Trade between the two is increasing at a faster rate than any of China's other partners, reaching US$125 billion last year -- close to China's trade with the US and Japan.
The EU is already the biggest trade partner for Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
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