ABSTRACT
As the 25 Member States of the extended European Union have agreed to cooperate closely in order to achieve a strong, free and democratic union, it will be necessary to act in a joint European interest on a political, economic and legal level. With respect to the legal level, the European Union is in need of a shared legal basis. When faced with this challenge we must more than ever try to achieve an awareness of cross-national differences which are rooted in the diverging national histories of law and its application. To my mind, there are two questions to be tackled: first, the issue of how to arrive at a common European thinking when starting from different national legal systems; and second, the issue in principle of whether there is an independent concept of thought at all.
