Union and Intersection

Few weeks back, we were busy at European Commission in Bruxelles ( as spelled in Belgium) to learn some aspects of European Union. The time I heard union it reminded me of intersection and union of set algebra.
The union will be effective if and only if the intersection is effective enough. EU has 27 countries at present and looking forward to expand by including countries like Switzerland, Norway etc. But all these countries have different languages with different cultures and this poses a big problem for the officials at Brussels. The current EU map is something like below( Courtesy: wikipedia)Though the future of this union solely depends on the bonding or coupling between the states but whatever they have achieved over last five decades is good enough. The effort was started just after second world war.
It took 60 years journey for the union to become the present day union but is it truly an European union ? No, it does not seems so though it apparently looks so from outside. From the map itself very clear, that it is a union with a hole as Switzerland. In addition to that many of the European states have not joined it yet. Also, the states, like UK who joined the union long back , don't accept common currency and visa. This is only tip of the iceberg(problems).

Though 22000 officials at the commission are trying their best to negotiate and meditate with different countries to keep them united but future is "certainly uncertain".