Greece is situated in the southeast part of the Mediterranean Sea. In the north the country borders with Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of "Macedonia" (the name is disliked by Greeks, who consider it an attempt to appropriate the glories of Ancient Macedonia) and Bulgaria. The neighbor to the East is Turkey, with a small land border in the northeast area of Thrace and the extended sea borders of the Aegean Sea. To the south lies Africa, and Italy is to the West. Greece has been a member of the European Union since 1980, but, to the country’s misfortune, had no land borders with any other EU country until 2007 when Bulgaria joined. Read more.