Jacques Le Goff on Europe's capacity for integration

Commenting on France's deportations of Roma in the left-liberal daily La Repubblica, French historian Jacques Le Goff urges dialogue, pointing to Europe's common roots: "As a historian I believe Europe's thousand-year history has been shaped by the diversity of its peoples, the mixture of cultures and their progressive integration. Europe emerged from the amalgamation of the so-called Roman, Gallic-Roman and Spanish-Roman peoples ... with the so-called Barbarians, a word that is banned from the vocabulary of historians today. Nowadays fortunately we no longer despise anyone who doesn't belong to what are referred to as the higher cultures. Historians and all those who wield social influence should show that what makes Europe special is its ability to integrate even those who are different. For sure, the problems with the integration of foreigners evident all over Europe today are connected to the growing number of immigrants in recent years. But we shouldn't forget that in late antiquity and in the Middle Ages the numbers of the so-called Barbarians - the Celts, the ancient Germanic peoples and the Slavs - who roved Europe were much higher."

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