Putin’s war is a disaster for Russia

Europhobes will never have a better argument against European integration than the seat of the European parliament in Strasbourg. It’s not just the €200 million per year it costs to move MEPs to and from Brussels once a month at great inconvenience to everyone; the building itself is a disgrace. It feels like a prison: identical glass corridors look out over a useless inner courtyard, so you can go on walks without the danger of escape. The former president of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso once suggested turning the building into the headquarters of the European Institute of Technology, which was an excellent offer both for the country and the city, but to no avail. In fact, though, the location made more sense to me once I visited Strasbourg’s archaeological museum. Argentoratum, as the Romans called it, began as a military outpost which guarded the Rhine for centuries. The two main streets of the old town are still where they were laid out by Roman engineers. Urban life continued in Argentoratum after the empire fell, while many Roman provinces, such as Britain, collapsed catastrophically into localism.

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In the opening months of the second world war, many of Strasbourg’s inhabitants were relocated to southern France. When France fell to the Nazis, they returned and were subjected to brutal Germanisation, as my grandparents were in Poland. The Rhine is still the border between the Latins and the Germans, but centuries of bloody fighting for control over Alsace-Lorraine has taught them both that pooling aspects of national sovereignty is preferable to mortal combat. That is not a lesson Vladimir Putin has yet learned. One of the few positives of his invasion is that western Europeans are discovering that eastern Europe also has a history.