Young Communists, Meet the European Union

Britain's salmon-colored financial sheet has a great piece today on political changes in Poland. Whereas young up and coming professionals used to join the communist party to get ahead and make connections, now it's training for membership in the EU that's keeping career climbers busy. With Poland slated to join the EU as early as 2004, they can't train people fast enough to fill the expected 2,500 job slots in the EU bureaucracy Poland is expected to receive. Yes, that's 2,500 administrative jobs just for one single new-member country. And people say the EU bureaucracy is overstaffed.

"Upwardly mobile leftists of previous generations attended courses on diplomatic protocol and good table manners when Communist Poland was emerging from rural backwardness after the second world war. Given Poland's continuing economic and institutional gap with the EU, entry will require a leap of similar magnitude, many Poles admit."

Good luck to them. At this rate of Eurocrat expansion, they can stop worrying about their economy producing private sector jobs altogether.