For Europe to integrate, or even function successfully, it is becoming more clear that 25 heads of state is far too many cooks in the kitchen. It must espouse a format of fewer decision makers—so says an influential think tank.

Compare March’s two-day summit of 25 European heads of state with the meeting of six European interior ministers that took place at the same time. It’s not hard to see which format gets more results.

On March 23, the interior ministers from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the UK and Poland met in northern Germany for a meeting that concluded in a bevy of agreements concerning matters of security, immigration, terrorism and drug smuggling.

“As these ministers were meeting,” Stratfor noticed, “their bosses were all in Brussels, Belgium, at the EU heads-of-state summit. It is of no small note that the six-way meeting was carried out in a more congenial fashion and produced more results than the two-day summit of 25 presidents and prime ministers, which broke out into open hostility at times” (emphasis ours throughout).

These ministers, from the Union’s six largest nations, represented 340 million of the 450 million European citizens that comprise the EU.

This intimate meeting indicates “there is plenty of room for cooperation—if they can get the forum right,” Stratfor asserted. “If the Europeans are going to have a transnational structure that succeeds in doing something other than holding very expensive, very counterproductive meetings, they will have to develop a format like this.”

Stratfor says the next steps will be the steady adoption of the Group of Six’s agreements to the bulk of the other EU states. “Not everyone will sign on to all agreements … and Europe’s smaller countries will undoubtedly be furious about not being consulted from the get-go. But if Europe is going to meaningfully integrate and not descend into arguments about sovereignty that paralyze decision-making, this is probably the only way to do it” (ibid.).

Stratfor isn’t alone in its analysis. Key EU thinkers have been calling for the fewer-cooks approach for quite some time. One thing the EU heads-of-state summit did produce was a resolution for the Union to take a hard look at its ability to accept more members. Part of this is cultural and religious—they know their citizens are leery about accepting a Muslim nation like Turkey. But another reason is that, within a few years, the number of heads at the table will exceed 30. This is only a recipe for more squabbling and stalemates.

The world has never been more dangerous: Iran’s nuclear program moves ahead under the administration of an apocalyptic madman; terrorists run the Palestinian Authority while appeasers run the Israeli government; the United States is crippled by domestic political division and a draining occupation; and Russia is becoming increasingly bold and unpredictable. Making the case for the need to have a strong, unified European superpower is not hard. But it can’t achieve that status in its current condition.

What can we expect from Europe? The Eternal God predicted long ago in His Word that the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire—the final kingdom in a series of empires tracing back to Nebuchadnezzar—would be comprised of 10 nations, or groups of nations.

Amazing detail is provided in a prophecy found in Daniel 2. There, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of deep prophetic significance, interpreted by God through the Prophet Daniel, of a fearsome statue. Daniel explained that the image depicted the order of Gentile kingdoms to succeed Babylon until the return of Jesus Christ. The two iron legs on this pictographic timeline depict the Roman Empire—picturing both the Eastern and Western legs of the empire. At the bottom of the statue are 10 toes—five on each foot. From this we can unabashedly predict that, not only will the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire include 10 kings, but also that five of those kings will be from Western Europe and five from Eastern Europe!

The “sure word of prophecy,” as the Apostle Peter called it, makes it clear. Europe will find its more “workable format” in the hands of 10 rulers. Watch for this amazing shift in European politics. It is coming soon!