Looking into the future of the EU

Brussels

GOOGLE "European Union collapse" and you will get 32.6 million results. Prophecies abound that economic anxiety, refugee hordes, terrorism, populism, border fences, anti-German resentment, British standoffishness, Russian belligerence and American indifference - the doom list goes on - will splinter the EU into smaller regional blocs or, in the extreme, into 28 untethered nation states.

There are germs of truth in these end-of-the-EU storylines: Britain could vote to pull out in June; another shock could propel Greece out of the euro; and the cumulative burdens could aggravate anti-European feeling in Germany, the largest and geographically pivotal country in the bloc of 500 million people and up until now the guardian of the system.