IN HIS STATE-OF-THE-UNION address on 13 September 2017 the President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, reflected on the future status of the EU, a merging of the President of the European Council and the President of the Commission towards a unitary state with a single president and currency. But the challenge of terrorism made France and Germany suggest passport border controls, to restrict free movement and suspend the Schengen area, for a period of years, for security reasons.

As a fresh-faced diplomat in Brussels in 1972 I worked enthusiastically for Norwegian membership in the European Community (EC), arguably a more appropriate and realistic name than European Union. The concept conveyed what I understood the European future to be, a better integrated Community of nations and not a union of states like the US. ‘Europe will not be made all at once or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.’ The union dimension so soon introduced, a federalist and euro-perspective, led to a counter-revolution in Europe, made explicit in 2014–17. It created Brexit. The French National Front founded in 1972 (by Jean-Marie Le Pen and taken forward by his daughter Marine) won the French poll in the European election in May 2014. Anti-EU parties in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, gained ground. The referendum in the UK was held on 23 June 2016 and gave a majority for leaving the union. Britain had promoted the enlargement of the EU after the fall of the Berlin Wall but was leaving the EU because of immigration, the border free Europe seemed no longer free. In all the member nations a clear anti-EU voice was heard and a strong opposition was in place inside the EU-Parliament. It is a warning shot, indeed a deep humiliation, that the splendid European idea can be so demonstrably challenged even in France, the very founding nation, and lead to a British departure after forty-three years as a leading member. Brexit ‘was caused by the impatience, highhandedness and inflexibility of European imperial ambition’.