"Economically it's an economic union or a collaboration. It's really similar to what we have in our country between the 50 states. There's free trading across country lines in Europe. There's easy migration of labor and money. And in fact they now have one currency called the euro," explains Dr. Walden. "So the whole point of the economic union was to make it easier for countries to trade in Europe and for resources to move around.

"Now, of course, the E.C. does not have the political power that the United States has. They are still working toward that," he adds.

"Now for the U.S., I think what it has done is it has made trade with Europe easier. Because now if you are a company here in the U.S. and you want to trade with Europe, you don't have to worry about different currencies in 15 or 20 different countries, you don't have to worry about different standards, different tariffs. Essentially you have one set of rules to deal with for all of so-called Western Europe, and that's made trade much easier.

"And indeed, we have seen trade between the U.S. and the E.C. go up dramatically in the last 50 years," he concludes.