Without imagination we will forever negotiate at low prices. Around 1980, Phillippe Aries was rightly perplexed in the fact that Spanish and Greek accessions to the European Community were discussed by using arguments about the output of cauliflower and green beans. That is what I mean by an oversimplification of things. For our part, we have a tendency, already mentioned, to fail by an excess of complexity and solemnity. We become timid before the image of a severe Europe, that keeps subjecting us to exams.
Integration seems a utopia, a distant ideal, an endless run.
We should relax. I mean we should develop a rapport with Europe, taking into account, first of all, its kindness. After all, we are not being offered an exhausting marathon, but a healing cure. Europe s school teacher s frown should not be an obsession to us. We should focus, rather, on its kind affability.