“Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve Rockin’ 2007” had nothing on the parties in Bulgaria and Romania during the wee hours of January 1. It was a “heavenly moment,” Bulgaria’s president said, when his country became a member of the European Union.

An EU flag ascended a pole near Romania’s capital building to the strains of the European anthem: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”—the same piece Leonard Bernstein conducted in Berlin 17 years ago to celebrate the Wall’s fall, when he changed the German word for joy (“Freude”) to freedom (“Freiheit”).

Within 24 hours of accession, 9,000 Romanians experienced their own “ode to freedom” when they crossed into Hungary. Most went simply for a cup of coffee then came right back home.

The now-27-nation EU borders the resource-rich Black Sea and governs about half a billion people.

Romania and Bulgaria are the latest of a slew of former-communist, Soviet-dominated states to join the Union. Eight others joined in 2004. In 2010, Croatia hopes to be the second nation that once comprised Yugoslavia to join the EU since the republic crumbled in the early 1990s (Slovenia joined in 2004).

So why is the EU so intent on absorbing Eastern Europe? What benefit does it gain from uniting with these two poor, underdeveloped, corruption-ridden countries still reeling from years of Soviet oppression and communist dictatorships? And why at a time when the EU is getting too big, many argue, and headed for disaster? Obviously, the benefits of such a push eastward would have to be considerable to outweigh the east’s shortcomings and override the Union’s diminishing absorption capacity.

One of those benefits has to do with resources. Whenever Moscow, a major energy supplier for Western Europe, decides to shut off the flow of gas or oil to a nation that sits as a middleman between Russia and Europe—as happened a year ago with Ukraine and with Belarus this week—Europe gets a bit nervous. This is where Romania and Bulgaria look particularly attractive: as suppliers and conduits of energy.

To prepare for EU entry, Bulgaria privatized seven of the government’s power distribution companies—selling them to companies in Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria. Romania is Central and Eastern Europe’s largest producer of natural gas; it has the largest oil reserves in Central and Eastern Europe; and it contains 10 of southeast Europe’s 11 petroleum refineries. On the coast of the Black Sea, Romania is a major energy transport point via the ports of Constanta and Tulcea.

These two nations are home to several major pipeline plans, with infrastructure designed to transport resources from the Black Sea (a major route for world oil exports) into Europe and to feed Europe the resources it needs from the Caspian Sea without Russia having to be involved.

Now the attractiveness of Eastern Europe begins to come into focus. Some argue that these nations will not bring the EU down economically—but will do just the opposite.

What we see happening right now is the building of the eastern leg of an age-old empire. As we stated in our July 2004 issue, throughout the Middle Ages and through the end of World War ii, “empire” in Europe has been sought through two primary methods: 1) “the effort to rejoin the eastern and western legs of the old Roman Empire under a single imperial rule, and 2) the imposition of a universal religion. These are the twin foundations upon which six of the seven resurrections of the Holy Roman Empire were built: a political foundation backed up by military force and a spiritual foundation established by the imposition of a state religion.”

What is building in these seemingly poor, crippled nations is actually an iron-strong conglomeration. This federation will be a resurrection of an age-old empire, spanning Europe and split relatively evenly between east and west. It will follow the historic form of the Roman Empire—which was split between the Latin West with its capital in Rome, and the Greek East with its capital in Byzantium (Constantinople, now Istanbul), a region termed by the Greeks, interestingly, Romania.

Watch for Eastern Europe to use its EU membership to grow in strength. Watch for any chaos economically or politically to be quickly remedied by a strong leader who comes to the fore in Europe—streamlining the EU’s operations into 10 major divisions. Watch for the Vatican to increase its efforts to reunite Eastern European Orthodoxy with Catholicism under the common denominator of Christian values in an increasingly secularized (and Islamicized) world.

Europe is about to stand on its own two feet!

For more, please see our free booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.