Nothing else like the EU

Charles Napier (Letters, February 12), sees the EU as embodying a kind of brotherhood of man.

However, I believe it quite wrong to suggest that love for one’s fellow men and women in other countries should lead one to consider it wise to share a government with them.

If anything, history shows that the unsavoury extremes of nationalism tend to arise when the selfdetermination of nations is perceived to be being denied or curtailed, and this should act as a salutary warning to the EU, as it moves inexorably towards becoming a supranational mega-state, in which peoples are ruled over by men they did not vote for, from countries they often know nothing about, and who often speak different languages to themselves.

In no other part of the world is there anything like the EU.

The Japanese are not clamouring to have an open border with Thailand or China. Canadians are not longing to have many of their laws made in Washington or Mexico City.

Yet in Europe, even suggesting that the maintenance of independent nation states, living in peace with their neighbours, is a wise aim, results in wild accusations of xenophobia and racism. Why is this?

I applaud Mr Napier’s taste in music, and would be glad to join him in signing from the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

However, I will be singing in praise of the brotherhood of the whole world, not just those parts of Europe which find themselves in an elite-driven embryonic empire called the European Union. Paul McQuillan, Sunderland.