> every European country used to be a great empire once and people are nostalgic of those times
How can people even be nostalgic about times they can't even remember? The last "great empire" in Europe was perhaps Germany in the 1940s. Few people remain alive who can remember it, and I don't think any of them would express a desire to be occupied by Nazis again. What would you say are the great empires that "we" have been a part of? Perhaps the French Empire in the time of Napoleon? Or perhaps the Romans? Seems like a long time ago to be nostalgic about, I doubt most Europeans could even tell you in which centuries those things even happened.
Here in the Netherlands we used to be a naval superpower, with many colonies all over the world. While it's pretty cool to imagine such a little country having an amazing navy, it was also a time of slavery and oppression (and a very lucrative slave trade with North America). Hardly something any decent person would want to be a part of, or return to. In fact we made fun of one of our PMs when he coined the term "VOC-mentaliteit".
I think the desire for a union is mostly a desire to have some influence on the world. Compared to the countries such as the US, China, and India, most individual European countries are tiny, and unable to make much of a difference in the world. If the GDPR was introduced in only a single country (e.g. Italy) but not the rest of Europe, nobody would even care. I strongly doubt this desire has anything to do with nostalgia.
We need to never stop learning and we need to keep deepening our human relationships. These both take on new dynamics in our 40s, especially as we realise we are an older person in most contexts and how quickly that reflects in how we are treated (the Paris café is a wonderful example of so much of this experience)
