Derek Bennett's letter with the above title (The Sunday Times, September 5) is a collection of inaccurate facts, historical distortions and flights of dismal fantasy.

He seems to suggest that NATO alone maintained the peace in Europe after the last world war and the EU had no role to play. A very simplistic conclusion.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was set up in 1949 to counteract the Soviet military menace and there is no doubt that it succeeded in keeping the Russians at bay during the cold war.

Nato however was neither capable nor was intended to deal with the tensions existing in Europe after the war.

Within a period of 70 years, Germany and France had been at each other's throat three times.

Other countries became involved and millions died in the last two world wars alone. Distrust, resentment and animosity still prevailed in Europe after 1945, especially in Germany and France.

By the late Forties the French were alarmed by Germany's post war industrial recovery, and fears of future confrontations had rekindled.

The concession to Germany by the British and American authorities, who controlled the Ruhr, to raise the ceiling of steel production caused further anxiety in French circles and prompted the French Government to take action.

A most extraordinary act of reconciliation was conceived by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, in May 1950, when he proposed the fusing of the resources and interests of the two great nations.

Coal and steel, the essential materials of industrial economies, would cease to be controlled and sold by the respective governments of Germany and France.

They would be managed by a high independent authority which France and Germany would agree to create and to which they would, over these particular resources, surrender sovereignty.

The Coal and Steel Community was born and became the first European Institution. Its benefits were not only economical but also political as the two elements essential for building up a war machine were removed from national control.

There is little doubt that the establishment of the EU following the reconciliation of Germany and France made Nato's task much easier and the prospects of war between the former protagonists unthinkable.

The US encouraged more European integration as a bulwark against communism on the Euro-Asian land mass.

After the war, Europe was fortunate in having great statesmen with a vision: Schuman, Monnet, Adenauer and Degasperi realised that, by sharing resources and uniting, European countries had everything to gain.

The old jealousies and rivalries would return if they remained divided. The speech by Winston Churchill in Zurich in 1946... advocating the United States of Europe acted as a spur for European unification.

The EU's role in maintaining peace and creating prosperity in Europe is undeniable, except to those who are uninformed about history.

Mr Bennett mentions the war in Yugoslavia as an example of the inability of the EU to preserve peace in Europe. He should know that the conflicts in the Balkans arose as a result of the downfall of the Communist regime.

The fires that raged in Kosovo and Serbia were extinguished by the intervention of European and American troops. The EU is helping the rehabilitation of the Balkan countries.

Mr Bennett states that all EU members are signatories to the GATT agreement and, as a result, they trade quite freely with non-members of the EU, such as the United States and Mexico.

He implies therefore that this is a free trade arrangement. This of course is not true. Membership of GATT (the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade) is not a passport to free trade.

Europe has trade agreements with different countries outside the EU, including the US and Mexico, but there is no free trade as such as barriers exist to the free movement of goods, services and labour that have long been abolished within the EU.

Mr Bennett may not feel European but many people I met in different countries in Europe, while being proud of their heritage and distinct qualities, feel very European and are eager to merge into a higher unity and share common values.

The last paragraph of Mr Bennett's letter is a doom and gloom scenario in which he predicts the demise of the EU with worse bloodshed than that sustained in Passchendaele. His comparison of the EU with the Soviet Union is ludicrous.

The Soviet Union was a state with a communist dictatorship and the people had no say in their destiny. The EU is an association of democratic states with different political parties competing.

There is no impediment for a party, like the UKIP, to canvass for withdrawal from the EU. Contrary to the false assertions of Eurosceptics, any member country can withdraw from membership of the EU, if it so wishes.

The visions of bloodshed and collapse of the EU are products of a dismal imagination and fantasy.