Yet the EU has little to show for the billions of euros it has spent.
Yet the EU is not yet an over-arching governmental super-state ruling apparatus.
The MEPs have not yet approved the EU's multi-year budget for 2014-2020.
Yet if the EU chooses to exclude its own China, it will be turning away the fastest-growing economy in its neighbourhood.
Yet, the EU has already upbraided Ireland for its business-friendly tax regime.
Thanks to those attractions, many European nations that aren't yet in the EU, such as Serbia, remain keen on joining, despite the crisis in the euro zone.
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The country's prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said that Poland will aim to join the euro in 2011, making his firmest statement yet on when the EU's largest former communist economy will adopt the single European currency.
The 15 member states of the EU have yet to approve the text's words, even without any numbers.
The EU's global catch of sharks ranks second only to Indonesia, yet the European Commission has committed itself - under the EU Action Plan for the Conservation and Management of Sharks - to adopt the necessary measures to conserve shark species and to minimise waste and discards from shark catches.
Apart from withdrawing yet more funds, the EU could also delay Bulgaria's accession to the Schengen visa-free travel zone, planned for 2011-12.
The treaty-signing demonstrates yet again that Britain increasingly looks to the EU and multilateral institutions as its closest partners, not the U.S., which Brown earlier in the year pointedly called Britain's most important bilateral relationship.
The UK's health expenditure has increased significantly but has only recently caught up with the EU average so we may not yet be seeing the full effects of this additional spending.
Yet despite all that, the EU has not done enough to quell the markets.
Turkish foreign policy may be becoming more assertive, yet EU membership remains the priority.
The CAP accounts for nearly half the EU budget yet only 4% of workers are employed in agriculture.
Yet three-quarters of the EU's budget comes in the form of direct contributions from governments, based on national income.
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Lisbon is widely backed not on its merits but because its failure would risk pushing the EU into yet another interminable internal debate.
The souring of relations with Russia helped push Mr Yanukovich towards the EU. Yet his core supporters in Ukraine's east and south prefer union with Russia and other ex-Soviet republics.
ECONOMIST: A country caught precariously between east and west
The new year will begin rather as the old one ended, with a Merkel-Sarkozy meeting, on January 9th, to prepare the way for yet another EU summit on January 30th.
Formal negotiations with the EU have yet to begin.
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EU. Yet the Turks do not expect instant admission.
ECONOMIST: Europe needs to repair relations with Turkey, fast
There is yet another EU official meeting Monday to address the situation in Greece and other financially troubled EU countries.
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UKIP's vote across the country has been growing but the anti-EU party has yet to win anything in Yorkshire since its seat in the European Parliament in 2009.
They share a single, unifying suspicion: that their coalition partners, the pro-EU Liberal Democrats, may yet block moves to bind the wounded Euro-Leviathan.
The EU has agreed - but not yet imposed - sanctions, in a bid to end the row.
Yet the Irish research confirms that the EU is too complex for non-specialists to understand the changes under way.
Fragmentation may often be inefficient the EU does not yet have a single system of patents but it is not usually fatal.
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