Essential question that needs to better understood, soberly, not emotionally. It is a bit like Nostradamus' predictions on the End of the World: always about to happen for reasons newly revised. But never of course happens. Why is it so common then? I think because... https://twitter.com/BrigidLaffan/status/1246520959445630980

...Different forces align despite very different motivations. It is not all Russian troll farms in St Petersburg or Wizard-of-Oz stuff from the Chinese. These are very salient, very determined actors but late to the game. It is also...

...an unshakable tenet of English-speaking media bc the notion that Europe is inevitably collapsing is a key to Anglophone self-confidence (war movies etc) Most Economist articles on France, for example, heavily imply the French system is near collapse...for the last 30 yrs..

...some EU federalists, too, play up to idea, saying Europe is in existential crisis to justify big leaps forward in integration and nullify national reluctance. Like many progressives, they don't realise this shrill TINA approach backfires, demoralising the pro-Europe base...

Pouty national politicians do it all the time too, when personally thwarted (like Varoufakis this week). People said the Iraq war would kill Europe, then it was the EU budget talks in '06 when JCJ said the failure to agree his deal meant Europe was in a 'profound crisis'...

..Then € was going to collapse in 10 days. Economists' certainty about this was an active contributor to the drive for Brexit, which was an actual, real disaster showing the danger of crying wolf, even out of conviction....

...You may have felt very strongly about the 2015 asylum seeker crisis. But the arrival of even 1m irregular migrants or arguments about same hardly means the single market or EU institutions would disintegrate. V respectable commentators made bizarre claims to that effect.

Basically anyone wishing down rhetorical catastrophe on the EU for whatever reason is a)not a friend of Europe (even if they think they are) and b) wrong anyway. Plus their melodrama is soooo boring for regular people who switch off (the chief danger, actually)

In 90s they used to say "Europe is like a tree. It grows every day but you never see it growing." Now it is depicted more as the leaning tower of Pisa. More accurate: EU is the Sagrada Familia of International Relations. And for some reason that really pisses certain people off./