In Europe we are living in a remarkable time. The European Union represents both a reality and an historical objective. Its creation, its consolidation and its extension, slow at first, now swifter, has not been an event but a gradual process, built on the hope that a united Europe can bring peace, well-being and democracy to peoples and countries which have distinguished themselves in many ways in the past, not least for their capacity to wield violence towards each other. We might say that the European Union is founded on history and on a critical knowledge of that history. Not on sentimental memory, not on vague feelings of identity, but on a rational knowledge of the European past, with its brilliant lights and deep shadows