What is Europe? Firstly, of course, it is a continent made up of countless disparate peoples, races and nations, and governed by different ideas, philosophies, religions and attitudes. Nonetheless, it has a common thread of history running through it; welded together by the continent's great institutions, such as the Church of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the European Union.

Europe, however, is also an idea. From almost the beginning of time, people have harboured aspirations to make this vast territory one. The Romans came close and a few centuries later, the foundations for a great European state were laid with the creation of the Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon overreached himself in attempting to create a European-wide Empire - as did Adolf Hitler. The European Union is a club of which everyone in Europe wants to be a member; although, as the rejection of the European Constitution by the French and the Dutch, and the British situation demonstrates, we Europeans still cling to our national independence.