Terrats Village, France—This piece was written in the south of France in the small house I own one hour by express train from Barcelona, the very week the European Union’s new leadership was installed for five years in Brussels, and amid the surge of the Catalans’ campaign for self-determination in Spain. This might be seen as the next step in the process of a EU that’s unwinding, as divisions are no longer between member states, but also within some of them—Spain for the Catalans, United Kingdom for the Scots.
It’s more likely, however, that both Catalans and Scots are showing that they would feel more at ease as new minor micro-members of the Union than as small morsels of their current states. They view Brussels as more benign than either London or Madrid, and as a guarantor rather than a threat. Just as the EU has been helping East European...
