Reply #29: Because Europe runs on a history.. [View All]

...that transcends the american historical perception. The English and the French will -never- share a country. The same goes for most of the other states and some neighbor of theirs. This becomes particularly true in the case of the balkans. While Europe is civilised enough to keep their differences in check in favor of economics and development, there's centuries of (sometimes violent) history that aren't going away any time soon.

If children in the Balkan states can recite 500-year old grudges between their ancestors and can spot nuances in facial contours and accents to place the heritage of people they meet a few generations back, they're not going to share one government during the course of this generation. Or the next one, or the one after that. Only in a science-fiction scenario of flying cars and the dismantling off the "nationality" concept could such a thing become possible.

Slovenia, for example, is a country of 2 million, which has its own language. It has fought for a thousand years to keep the language alive, under germanic, turkish, and yugoslav rule. Never until 1991 has it been independent, and yet it has fought bitterly throughout history and has kept a very distinct national identity. States like that don't simply merge into a melting pot of nations and dilute into a faceless "union".

Straying off course though, the point I should have been making is that the differences of European countries is what makes the EU strong. The freedom to set your own direction and destiny independent of our neighbors, to keep alive your traditions and culture, while maintaining some level of economic unity, that's what makes the EU shine.