John Neimer’s contribution to the European security discussion makes a partly valid point but is too simple.

The origins of the EU are not in the 1970s but twenty years earlier, and saw the vital rapprochement between the long-standing enemies, Germany and France. It was on this foundation that much of the subsequent peace and security were built.

The role of the Council of Europe should not be overlooked, administering the British-written European Convention on Human Rights, setting into international law some fundamental rights for all European citizens.

The role of NATO, while clearly important, is more ambiguous: the fascist dictatorships of Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, and of the Colonels in Greece received moral and material support from NATO on the suspect basis that an enemy’s enemy is a friend. It was the European Union that helped to usher those states away from their dictatorial past into a more democratic future.

Moreover, bringing the eastern European ex-Communist states into the European comity of nations is a something for which the EU is entitled to considerable credit, and this is a continuing process.

Meanwhile, the US has turned its attention away from Europe to developments at the western side of the Pacific (the Far East to us). They have made it repeatedly clear that Europe must take much more responsibility for it own security and defence. While NATO remains an important framework, much more coherence of purpose is a European necessity.

I would feel much more confident of achieving this in a very imperfect world from inside the EU.

Yours sincerely Barry Tempest Romulus Close Dorchester