Conclusion: In Search of European Unity

Abstract

In his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, the then president of the European Commission, José Emmanuel Barroso, referred to the values that inspire the European Union and that find their roots deep in European history, especially in the history of humanism and the Enlightenment:

‘Peace is not mere absence of war, it is a virtue’, wrote Spinoza (…). The European Union is not only about peace among nations. It incarnates, as a political project, that particular state of mind that Spinoza was referring to. It embodies, as a community of values, this vision of freedom and justice.²

The unification of Europe is an age-old dream. It has been attempted by conquerors, pondered by philosophers, sought by scholars — and sabotaged by as many politicians as have extolled it, with not infrequently the same doing both.

Dirk U. Stikker, 1966¹