What's your bet the EU will be in good shape on Jan 1, 2028?

Photo by Guillaume Périgois on Unsplash

I voted against Brexit but could be excused for wondering if all the angst over the Leavers’ push to get Britain to leave the European Union (EU) will matter in the long term.

My reasoning is simple. The EU is showing the strains of presenting a united front, especially with the war in #Ukraine pushing countries like Poland and Hungary to occasional positions of individualist magnificence.

What happened recently makes one wonder if it would be wise to place a bet on the EU remaining a viable alliance of 27 member states, come January 1, 2028. That will be the 70th anniversary of the day the Treaty of Rome entered into force, thereby laying the foundations of the modern EU.

As the EU itself notes, at inception it was “primarily an economic organisation”, only to eventually evolve “into a project to guarantee high levels of social protection for its citizens”.

The problem, of course, is differing ideas of what constitutes social protection while mainta…