Old Europe is a term used in the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx which starts with the words:

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

In January 2003 it was used (probably mockingly) by Donald Rumsfeld to refer to those European countries who were not in favour of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld answered to a comment, that more than 70 % of the people in Europe are not in favour of the war in Iraq:

"''You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe."

It is probably equivalent to the European Union, with the exception of those nations where the government supports the U.S. in defiance of its people, such as Spain and the United Kingdom.

The German translation "altes Europa" is word of the year 2003 in Germany, because the Germans use it in some ironic way. The word went largely unnoticed in the English-language press.

The term 'Old Europe' implies the existence of a 'New Europe', which seems to contain those nations which once were behind the Iron Curtain and in the USSR-controlled Warsaw Pact but which now are flirting with the American-controlled NATO.

Ironically it thus turned out a United States Secretary of Defense reintroduced a term first used by the creator of communism, a political ideology which has been demonized by the USA for decades.