The French would like us to vote leave?

[Vrijeme]

I saw this in today's Liberation newspaper (apologies for the rough translation):

From the perspective of Brussels, European leaders would not be sorry with a Brexit, although few of them say so in public. Freed from frequent blocking from London, they could finally revive the Union.
5 reasons:

1. To stop endangering the EU
2. To discourage other countries who wish to have their own referendums - the British exit must be made painful

1. To complete the work on the € project.

1. to stop enlargement for a while (apparently its London that wants this as work on expansion gets in the way of work on deepening)

1. The British are far too interventionist and we're not liberal enough for the continent. If we leave, they can get on with things without us holding them up.

Uum... I don't know if that makes me want to leave or stay and make their lives hell!

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-referendum-too-many-part-time-europeans-are-diluting-an-ever-closer-union-claims-jean-claude-a7095966.html

We need to get out whilst we still can. Merkel has also increased the German defence budget because she says Germany can no longer rely on the US defence wise. Dh says what will happen is that the competencies will be extended to include defence, thus we lose a veto, asit moves to QMV et voilà, the EU then has a set up similar to NATO and then moves to EU Armed Forces.

Well, not really.

The irony is that Britain has managed to shift the EU project in the direction it always wanted (fast expansion, shallow integration, trade-focused). And now that the EU has never been more "British", Britain is about to leave.

But it doesn't mean that the EU can magically go back in time and revert to the non-British version of the project, that ship has sailed. It also doesn't help that France and Germany can't really agree on what more integration would look like, and that they both have increasing eurosceptic movements to placate domestically.

Yes, some people are hoping that Brexit could be an opportunity to refound the project, but the only certain thing in the short term is that the EU will be weakened. So it's a very, very risky gamble, and from what I've been reading most people are rather pessimistic.