"The European Union has always been sold, to its citizens, on a practical basis: Cheaper products. Easier travel. Prosperity and security."

"But its founding leaders had something larger in mind. They conceived it as a radical experiment to transcend the nation-state, whose core ideas of race-based identity and zero-sum competition had brought disaster twice in the space of a generation."

The NYT has an article

Why Europe Could Melt Down Over a Simple Question of Borders

"France’s foreign minister, announcing the bloc’s precursor in 1949, called it “a great experiment” that would put “an end to war” and guarantee “an eternal peace.”
...
“The keen feeling of national identity must be considered a real barrier to European integration,” Mr. Lange wrote in an essay that became a foundational European Union text.

But instead of overcoming that barrier, European leaders pretended it didn’t exist. More damning, they entirely avoided mentioning what Europeans would need to give up: a degree of their deeply felt national identities and hard-won national sovereignty.
...
“The keen feeling of national identity must be considered a real barrier to European integration,” Norway’s foreign minister, Halvard M. Lange, once wrote."


Top-rated comments

"It's one thing to merge with other countries in Europe.
It's another to feel like one is merging with the Middle East or Africa. the EU was not supposed to be about that."

and

"It is one thing for a nation like Germany to share a common market and porous border with Luxembourg or Belgium. It is quite another to share one de facto with Syria and Chad."