CIA report: EU's future bleak

A CIA report has made some very troubling predictions concerning the future of the EU. Unless the EU makes significant changes to it's welfare system, the CIA predicts the Union will break up within 15 years. The report cites Germany as the crux of the problem - with France and Italy getting honorable mention:

[T]he EU’s economic growth rate is dragged down by Germany and its restrictive labour laws. Reforms there - and in France and Italy to lesser extents - remain key to whether the EU as a whole can break out of its "slow-growth pattern".

After pointing to several problems facing the EU, the report goes on to say that the current leadership of Europe is unlikely to make the reforms necesary, and that it will most likely take a major economic crisis to break the current thinking in the EU.

Concerning the growing migrant population in Europe, the report states that EU state must do a better job of accomodating this growing demographic or face even further problems. The report makes specific reference to the growing number of muslims in Europe:

Europe’s Muslim population is set to increase from around 13% today to between 22% and 37% of the population by 2025, potentially triggering tensions.

With regards to NATO, and other post WWII alliances, the CIA is convinced these institutions will also dissolve and US and EU relations continue to erode:

The EU, rather than Nato, will increasingly become the primary institution for Europe, and the role Europeans shape for themselves on the world stage is most likely to be projected through it. Whether the EU will develop an army is an open question.

If this news wasnt bad enough, the report also predicts the econonomies of China and India will surpass Europe in the near future. One of the reasons for this, according to the report, is the increased level of research and development going on in these countries compared to the EU. Also, the EU's dependence on natural gas from an increasingly instable Russia will be another headache for our European cousins.

So what should we make of all this? Nothing. It will be entertaining to sit back and watch the grand liberal experiment that is Europe disintegrate before our very eyes. The Left in the US has also held up Europe as a shining example of their policies in action. Europe is impotent as a military power, has bankrupted itself with its socialist welfare system, and now faces a cultural crisis like no other because of it's myopic immigration policies.

What no one on the left will admit, however, is that it was U.S. might that has shielded Europe from global realities since the end of the Second World War. Now Europe thinks its all grown up, and they want to venture out on their own. But without the United States backing them up, Europe will be incapable of protecting their own economic interests or those of their allies. As a result, Europe will see its roll in global affairs continue to diminish.

The Europeans have found themselves in the unenviable position of having neither a carrot, nor a stick.