On December 10, 2012, Herman Van Rompuy, an amiable Belgian given to writing haikus in his spare time, walked up on to a stage in Oslo for the proudest speech of his life. In the depths of its most serious economic crisis since the Second World War, as Greek protesters waved placards depicting Angela Merkel as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, the European Union had been awarded the Nobel peace prize. Mr Van Rompuy, then-president of the European parliament, cleared his throat. “If I can borrow the words of Abraham Lincoln,” he said, “what is being assessed today is ‘whether that union, or any union so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure’.”Herman Van Rompuy delivers his Nobel peace prize acceptance speech in Oslo in 2012, in which he asked how unions could endure CORNELIUS POPPE/GETTY IMAGESThose words are as true at the end of this decade as…

Source: The Times December 30, 2019 17:03 UTC