What has happened to you, Europe?” cried Pope Francis, accepting this year’s Charlemagne prize. Here is the question we should all be asking, as a Pew poll finds 61 per cent of the French have an unfavourable view of the EU, more even than in Britain. What has gone wrong? Why is Europe failing and fading?

It is a huge mistake to imagine that a Britain teetering on the brink of Brexit is just an eccentric exception to the continental rule, an expression of insular cussedness by the typically Eurosceptic Brits.

Consider other recent polling data. Across 10 member states, including some of the most pro-European ones, Pew found a median of just 51 per cent taking a favourable view of the union. In the last publicly available Eurobarometer poll of all 28 member states, 43 per cent said things in the EU are going in the wrong direction against just 23 per cent saying they are going right. In other surveys, 48 per cent of Italians declared themselves in favour of leaving the EU, as did 29 per cent of Germans. Need I go on?