The European Union should be discerning about what lessons to take from history.
The view ahead for the European Union is bleak and scary, so looking back is often a strong temptation. The past offers comfort, consolation and possibly even inspiration. This week, the EU was wallowing in memories of the single market's origins, in a bid to breathe new life into the 20-year-old's enervated body.
The announcement on Friday that this year's Nobel Prize for Peace was being awarded to the European Union was another invitation to retrospection. As people cast around to search for plausible reasons why (this year of all years?) the awards committee had chosen the EU, they took comfort in that well-worn line that the EU had provided peace in Europe for more than 50 years (if one overlooks the shame of the former Yugoslavia). The line is true, as far as it goes. The EU put to rest the ghosts of successive Franco-German wars, and provided a model of economic and political co-operation between parliamentary democracies that proved strong enough to outlast the communist era.
The harsh truth, though, is that for the EU past achievements are no guarantee of future success. Nor even of future relevance.
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/fifty-years-on-what-have-we-learned-/75430.aspx
