LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dear Sir, Derek Moore (letter to the Editor, June 5) seems to believe that the maintenance of peace is no longer the business of the European Union, as if war had been abolished in this neck of the woods. Both my parents were in the army and I was born during the Second World War. My marriage to an Argentinian was my contribution to international peace and understanding, following the Falklands/Malvinas war! There has always been a war somewhere during my lifetime. On a more serious note, when we lived in northern Greece in the 90*s and saw tanks being unloaded onto local beaches on their way to the Balkans, war seemed very close. There were also several occasions when war seemed about to break out (at least in the skies) between Greece and Turkey. And has Mr Moore heard of a European island called Cyprus, still a lot of scope for European peacekeeping there, I would have thought? Any setback for European unity is a setback for the cause of peace. Those French and Dutch citizens who voted “No”, want to stop the clock, or even turn it back, for their own selfish reasons. They are probably the same people who would like to send all immigrants home. Those of us who travelled in countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece in the 1960s or earlier, know how much they have benefitted as the European Union has developed and prospered. Now it is the turn of the less fortunate East Europeans to jump onto the European bandwagon. Their progress to peace and prosperity has, no doubt, been slowed by the “I'm alright Jack” attitude of some Europeans. Let's hope it turns out to be only a minor delay and that the majority of our fellow Europeans will soon revert to pursuing the greatest good of the greatest number.