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Despite the lessons of Lebensraum the EU has no use for historical precedents

Should the EU ever decide to concern itself with more than agricultural policy, military interventions and the standardisation of tax rates on interest income,’ the German classicist Christian Meier writes in From Athens to Auschwitz (2005), ‘it would be wise to draw on the Greeks for inspiration about how to expand civil society and civic freedom.’ The Greek experiment with democratic politics shaped the achievements in other fields that served to distinguish them from their neighbours, according to Meier. Europe has repeatedly returned to those achievements, sometimes extending them, sometimes betraying them. The problem, as he sees it, is that Germans have become too wary of appropriating any historical legacy because of the shame and infamy that still attaches to the last attempt. Is the EU, he asks, really to be the first political entity with no use for historical precedents?

As the EU pursues its expansionist policy (28 countries and counting) they should be conscious
of the historical  precedents of lebensraum.

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