Yet it was from the ashes of a war-ravaged continent that a new hope emerged, a bright, shining belief, a vision of a Europe at last at peace, of nation states for so long enemies co-operating and building a stable, peaceful and prosperous common European market. This is the European ideal that became the EEC and ultimately the European Union. The European ideal has brought an end to centuries of war, hunger, poverty, deprivation and repression in Western Europe.