The End of the EU?

How much longer will it last?

Has its heyday now been passed?

It started some sixty years ago,

And progress first was very slow,

With just six nations then on board,

Who signed the original accord.

Twenty years later another three

Joined that august company.

The nineteen-eighties saw three more

Apply and enter the EU door.

Eight years later another three

Decided that’s where they wished to be.

Ten more years; two thousand and four,

Marked the entry of yet ten more.

Three years later another two,

Came to share the EU pew.

Then at a much more recent date

Croatia joined, making twenty-eight.

So there are now twenty-eight in the club,

And there, of course, there lies the rub.

Twenty-eight nations won’t agree;

Some countries already want to be free

Of rule from Brussels, which ignores

Many a heart-felt national cause.

It wants to sweep onward to one big state,

At what appears a rapid rate.

But there are problems; the Greeks are bust,

But keeping the show on the road’s a must.

So they had to be helped, and the others too,

Whose debts are large and resources few.

Borders once open have now been shut,

To stop the almost unending glut

Of migrants seeking a richer life,

Away from their homelands’ corruption and strife.

Negotiations can be fraught

As nations demand what they think they ought

To gain from being part of a larger whole,

Where everyone want to have a role.

All around the signs are there,

The EU will soon likely share

The fate of other grand designs

For which today there’s no-one pines,

That in the end broke up and died,

Leaving just a few who cried.

It won’t be months; it may be years

Before it finally disappears,

But it will surely go the way,

Of an empire which has had its day.