I don't think of these things as necessarily "End of Times", but they are unabashedly "pagan" images all the same.
In fact, the more I think about it, the "woman-riding-the-bull" (not "harlot-riding-the-beast") symbolism was chosen precisely to eliminate whatever residual Christian spiritualism that had been retained from the EU's start as a Catholic project.
Excuse me.
The 12 stars in the EU flag have a 'biblical' origin (well, along with other things as well; though this is disputed). See
here (and the bit under "biblical intrepretation as well").
Of course that's just the symbolism (which at this point did have some revelance in reality; Christian Democracy was dominant in Europe at that time).
Seriously people, the EU is infrutating sometimes, but it is hardly the politburo-bureaucratic fantasy that some on the right seem determine to paint it as.
