The EU is infected by a “populist leprosy”; its fate hangs in the balance; the cracks in the organisation are widening. These are not the ravings of a deluded Brexiter. On the contrary, they are the views of, respectively, the president of France, the chancellor of Germany and the president of the European Commission.
Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker were speaking before last week’s EU summit. The agreement reached there on migration allowed the three leaders to claim modest progress. But there is no doubt that internal pressures on the EU are mounting. With populist and nationalist politicians in power in Italy, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia, it is becoming harder to form an EU consensus. Further rows on migration, reform of the eurozone and the EU budget are all but guaranteed.
External pressures are also mounting. Donald Trump’s hostility to the bloc becomes plainer by the day. Last week the US president tweeted that the EU was “set up to take advantage of the US”, a dramatic departure from America’s traditionally supportive attitude. In a couple of weeks’ time, Mr Trump will hold his first summit with another leader with a considerable animus against the EU: Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The EU’s political leaders have reason to watch that meeting with real apprehension.