Admittedly, the old continent is at the moment a bit tied up in unpleasant matters such as wrangling over how much bailing out Greece is going to cost or whether the borders should (temporarily, they say) go up again.
So, perhaps a good time to recall something I posted a bit more than a year ago: a quote from Tony Judt.
To their own surprise and occasional consternation, Europeans have begun to do this: to create a bond between human beings that transcends older boundaries and to make out of these new institutional forms something that really is a community. They don't always do it very well, and there is still considerable nostalgia in certain quarters for those old frontiers. But something is better than nothing; and nothing is just what we shall be left with if the fragile international accords, treaties, agencies, laws and institutions that we have erected since 1945 are allowed to rot and decline -- or, worse, are deliberately brought low. As things now stand, boundary breaking and community making are something that Europeans are doing better than anyone else.
Well...'better'...um...maybe not at the moment, but one can always hope for improvement.
Happy Europe Day!
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