I stumbled across this interesting take on Europe from a Latin American writer.

"I visited Europe for the first time in 1950, sent to study at the University of Geneva and to sit in on courses at the ecole D'Hautes Etudes International. Switzerland was intact. But as I traveled the continent I saw the urban chasms left by the Blitzkrieg in London and by the R.A.F. in Dresden. Vienna was occupied by the three then‑allied powers (the U.S.A., Britain, France and the USSR). Large effigies of Lenin and Stalin covered the Hofsburg. The great hotels, occupied by the occupiers, were unavailable and one would look for rooms in boarding houses. Leaving Vienna was a more hazardous event than coming in: only the good offices of a friendly French diplomat gave me an exit permit and I was on my way to a devastated Italy. Shoeless children offered sciusa shoeshine. Theft was rampant, men in very shabby clothes cluttered in third class cartridges with bags held together by rope. It was the world pictured by De Sica and Rossellini, while in France my friends lived in unheated apartments as the collaborationist debate heated up a world of ambiguous innocence and guilt, but all related to the Bosch, the German enemy. You needed coupons to buy almost everything in Britain and the magnificent cathedral at Cologne was badly hurt.

Half a century later, Europe is the largest economic and commercial bloc in the world. With 500 million inhabitants, it possesses the highest level of education, communications and general well‑being in the planet. In population, wealth and trade, it surpasses the U.S.A. The pain of the postwar period I lived in 1950 is gone. Today Europe, in general terms, breathes satisfaction.

When Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman joined Konrad Adenauer that very year of my student days in 1950 to plant the seeds of the European Community, they were moved by a fervent desire: that there would never be another war between France and Germany. That the periodic catastrophes of 1870, 1914 and 1939, should never again happen.

Built on the axis of good will between France and Germany, today Europe is, in a large measure, a success that its citizens take for granted. Nonetheless, the historic will that lead to the creation of the E.E.C, precisely because it was so successful, tends to be forgotten. There is a European youth that doesn't think twice about the past. The present is pleasant and comfortable. Frontiers are open, popular culture does not require a passport, the past is over, history is forgotten."

From Carlos Fuentes, Latin America and Europe, Conference 1 June 2007

There have been interesting debates in both the Times and the Yorkshire Post about the comparative roles the European Union and NATO have played in helping peace prosper in the most of Europe over the last 60 years.

The difference between the two was very well surmised by a James Rodgers in the Times who said that NATO kept a “negative peace” while the EU has built a “positive peace”.

When the Treaty of Rome was set out in 1951 peace, along with social and economic prosperity, was one of its major objectives.

In the space of 60 years the EU has helped countries previously at war form excellent relationships and work closely together on a wide variety of issues.

Rather than simply work to avoid potential external aggression, like NATO, the EU has sought to ensure peace within its borders through profound economic co-operation, including a single market, and through encouraging exchanges of all kinds among citizens.

This contrasts with NATO, which, despite achieving its main goal of dissuading external aggression, failed to keep peace between its own members (the conflict between Turkey and Greece) and alllowed Portugal to be a member when it was a dictatorship.

There is no doubt that both have played a role, but that of the EU has been far more profound than that of NATO.

The very nature of terrorism means that there is rarely good news to report; all the more reason to savour the moment when there is.

The ceasefire announced by Basque terrorist group ETA is most welcome. It is a sure sign that even the most hardened of terrorist organisations can come to their senses and realise that violence is counter productive whereas peaceful, democratic debate is the only viable way to settle differences of opinion.

ETA still has to prove that they are serious about this ceasefire, and that they are genuinely committed to peace, but nonetheless this is a start

Tribune, the left-wing British political journal, last week reviewed a new book by historian Tony Judt on Europe post-1945 (Postwar: a history of Europe since 1945). Under the headline 'A continent mortgaged to its terrible past', reviewer Robert Taylor describes Judt's analysis of the birth of the European Union out of the remnants of six years of war:

Judt, perhaps more than any other, sets out a stark, almost unbelievable picture of a shattered continent close to utter annihilation in what must have seemed to many millions of survivors as the start of year zero. It is estimated that about 36.5 million Europeans died between 1939 and 1945 from war-related causes and more than half of them were non-combatant civilians. … Epidemics and chronic malnutrition stalked the continent. Civil wars and social disorders threatened to inflict with further misery. Many cities were little more than piles of rubble by 1945."

Taylor also ties his review to the modern EU:

"At a time when Europe as an issue is being trivialised in the British political debate, Professor Tony Judt has written a masterpiece on the history of our continent since the end of the Second Word War. It deserves a wide readership, not least among the Little Englanders and sceptics who are now once more dominant in both the Labour and Conservative parties."

Parliament held an afternoon debate today commemorating the anniversary of the end of World War II. It's quite moving in a Parliament with members from the countries that suffered most during the war. And German members, too, regard 9 May 1945 as a day of liberation.

Jean Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg Prime Minister and current President of the European Council, gave a an excellent speech. It was pitched at just the right level and won an unusual standing ovation, with all but UKIP's MEPs standing. (Is there nothing they can ever admit to finding positive in what they hear in the European Parliament?)