Oh, Brussels! Only in the land of the EU could 49 objectives containing 325 proposed actions be seen as the answer to Europe’s future development. But remarkably, this is exactly what the grandly sounding Conference on the Future of Europe has recently proposed.

Although originally conceived as a great experiment in collaborative, pan-European policymaking, what the EU actually delivered was a two-year vehicle for President Emmanuel Macron to wax lyrical about his centralising, integrating vision of a French Europe.