The core problem. Europe’s trouble isn’t that Brussels is incompetent or that countries refuse to cooperate. It’s that the Union has taken on more shared rules and shared costs than its sense of common belonging can comfortably carry.
It can do a great deal together; it just doesn’t yet feel enough like one community to bear the expensive parts.
The twist most people miss. Europeans actually trust the EU about as much as — often more than — their own national governments (roughly 49% trust the EU, 36% their national government). So the problem isn’t general approval. It’s the willingness to share real costs — to help pay for another country’s pensions or debts, or accept binding rules — and that’s where the sense of “we’re one” runs thin. The pressure building. Europe is ageing and having far…