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Europe's destiny Destination Europe: the political and economic growth of a continent by Kjell M. Torbiörn Manchester University Press, 2003
Destination Europe is a slightly misleading title since its subject, the political development of Europe from 1945 to 2003, is a journey with a point of origin when Europe, which a generation earlier dominated the world, lay in ruins with no destination. The only certainty about the future was that nothing would remain the same. We now know-and Kjell Torbiorn would probably not have been surprised-that the latest attempt to fix the EU's development around a constitution appears to have failed.
Though the EU is the central theme of this book, NATO is also tackled in detail and other organisations, such as the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, where Mr Torbiorn is now a senior official*, and the Organisation of security and Co-operation in Europe, also have walk-on parts. The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), precursor of the OECD, plays a key early role as the body which managed the...