Hero worship is culturally hardwired into our psyche and cultivated in our early development by our experience of our parents a daddy and mommy who are all powerful, all beautiful, all everything. Our eventual awakening to their frailty only intensifies our searches elsewhere for other heroes both in private and public life. And so it is, too, in our intellectual life: St Sigmund, St Karl, St Jurgen et cetera Chacun a son Saint For many, history is still a story of kings, and prime ministers, and generals, and statesmen (and stateswomen). And so it is, too, in our little puddle of European...

The European integration process has provided for the internal market, an area without internal frontiers, allowing for free movement of goods, persons, services and capital within the European Union. Complementary, the Union needs mechanisms to combat the negative consequences of the open borders policy and to protect its external borders. Therefore, it was decided that justice and home affairs cooperation should also be developed at European level. The Hague Programme is the working programme of the European Union concerning justice and home affairs cooperation in the period 2005-2010. In...