Pedro Martínez:
Just to clarify, I never compared the EU to the US. By perfect I mean that people do not necessarily want the same currency or political system, and for that reason some aspect of the EU are still being worked on.

I didn't say that Europeans formed the Union to stop war, but rather that Europeans stopped fighting and formed the Union. The EU has its origins in political, economic and idelogical principles that go back to the 19th century. It took two world wars to show European people that working together was better than fighting, and the motivation for the formation of the EU was there even before those wars.

> What old prejudices? And what has the admission of the Slavic countries to the
> EU to do with the holocaust???

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had a deep hatred of Slavic peoples. There was a time when it would have been impossible to suggest people in Germany that they would share the same currency and even some of the same laws with Czech or Polish people. We also have to remember that the Holocaust went beyond Jews. Gypsies, Slavs, Communists, and other peoples were targetted by the Nazis. Millions of Slavs died in and out of concentration camps.

Some of the prejudice is still remnant in terms like "Bohemian", a term used to describe "the untraditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities". This was "a common term for the Romani people of France, who had reached Western Europe via Bohemia". Of course, the Kingdom of Bohemia was located in waht today is the Czech Republic. It was that kind of prejudice that the Nazis used against Gypsies and Slavs. The EU has made a lot of progress in moving against that prejudice and discrimination.