There’s a lot wrong with the EU. In Brussels’ ghastly postmodernist European quarter, with its rampant sick-building syndrome, bureaucrats today can reappear tomorrow morning working for private law firms. Europe faces an escalating war, a cost of living crisis, probable recession and, in Italy, the first ever far-right government of a big member state. Then there’s Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat: to argue that he wouldn’t do something so self-defeating seems to overlook how we got here.

The EU might also lose its American protector if Donald Trump or similar returns to power in 2024. Partly because of these threats, the EU looks unprecedentedly strong. A so-called “union” that was mostly designed to manage rival internal interests is now uniting against its enemies.