IT WAS a gathering unlike any the European family had ever seen. In the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels his fellow leaders commiserated with Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron (not pictured, above) over his failure to keep his country in the EU. Fractious as the marriage with Britain has sometimes been, there was resigned sorrow and regret at the decision to end it. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, who chaired the gathering, described his feelings thus: “I felt as if someone very close to me left our home, and in the same second I felt also how dear and precious this home was to me.”

A few hours earlier, in the packed chamber of the European Parliament, the kids had been at each others’ throats. The Parliament likes to think of itself as the guardian of the European ideal. But its role as a sump for protest votes means it also provides a European stage and stipends for those who would destroy the union (including some, like Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party, unable to secure a place in their own nations’ parliaments). Unsurprisingly, things can get heated.

Euro-federalists accused Mr Farage of lies like those of Nazi propagandists; Mr Farage, reminding MEPs that they had laughed at him 17 years ago, when he was first elected on a get-Britain-out ticket, crowed “You’re not laughing now, are you?” “Long live free nations! Long live the United Kingdom! Long live France!” declared a jubilant Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front (FN). The Brexit vote, she announced, was “by far the most important historic event known by our continent since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

On that she may be right. The EU has suffered many upsets in recent years, including the huge challenges of the debt crisis in the euro zone and the mass influx of refugees and other migrants. But Brexit is qualitatively different. It strikes at the very idea of a union, rather than its shoddy or misguided implementation.

Until the referendum on June 23rd, the EU could always boast that, for all its flaws, it was still a club that many wanted to join and none had left. The union has been fruitful and multiplied since its precursor, the European Coal and Steel Community, was formed by six members in 1951. In 2013 Croatia became the 28th member of the EU; in 2015 Lithuania was the 19th to join the euro. The EU is the world’s biggest single market, counting some 500m rich-world consumers. It stabilised new democracies in southern and eastern Europe, and though it failed to bring peace in the former Yugoslavia it has done much to sustain the peace that eventually arrived. The protesters of Ukraine’s Maidan were shot holding aloft the union’s blue flag with its circle of stars.

And now the British have voted to leave. True, the nation’s membership had often been half-hearted. Britain had stayed out of the euro and of the Schengen free-travel area. But that barely softens the blow of the union’s second-biggest economy and a leader in some of its major reforms deciding to walk away. The decision leaves more in its wake than regret and resignation. It leaves two big questions. Will anyone else follow Britain out of the union? And what reforms are needed if the institution is to cohere and survive?

Will the French let her?

Eurosceptics across Europe are moved by dissatisfactions similar to those of Britain’s Leave voters: resentment of globalisation; estrangement from elites; a sense that the EU is distant, undemocratic and overbearing; and, above all, a conviction that the cherished openness of the EU has let in too many foreigners who take away jobs, benefits and national identity (see chart 1). Popular support for the EU has collapsed across the continent, nowhere more strikingly than in France, where the FN has prepared posters featuring a pair of chained wrists breaking free, under the caption: “Brexit: and now France!” Ms Le Pen talks of a “People’s spring” in Europe, a phrase redolent, rather unfortunately, of the Arab one on the far side of the Mediterranean.

Once the driving force of the EU, the French are now among its most Eurosceptic citizens. A recent survey of major EU countries by the Pew Research Centre finds that they have a more unfavourable view of the union than is found in any other country bar Greece (see chart 2). Ms Le Pen thinks this national mood could help her win the presidential election next spring. Polls suggest that she will make it into the second round of the election, but until now the assumption has been that she would go on to lose to a candidate of the centre-right because a big enough chunk of left-wing voters would hold their noses and vote for her opponent. Left-wing voters who got behind a centre-right candidate in just this way blocked her bid to win the presidency of a region last December.

The Brexit vote could alter the equation. Ms Le Pen’s strategy has been to win respectability by turning her party, previously seen as a creature of the extremist fringe, into a mainstream nationalist alternative to left and right, and the British vote makes the party’s Euroscepticism seem less exceptional. It puts questions of identity, immigration and national sovereignty at the centre of the debate, where she can shape the agenda and peel away votes from not only the centre-right but the left, too. The FN is already the most popular party among working-class voters, and it will not have escaped Ms Le Pen’s notice that a third of Britain’s Labour Party supporters went against their party’s policy and voted with Mr Farage, whose UKIP did well in many former Labour strongholds at last year’s election. Less of the French left may be relied on to vote against Ms Le Pen than was once expected. Voters elsewhere will also soon be making themselves heard. Italy’s centre-left prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has staked his future on a constitutional referendum this autumn. The vote is not directly about Europe; Mr Renzi wants Italy to replace its dysfunctional legislature with a unicameral parliament and an electoral system that produces stable majorities. If he loses and resigns as a result, Italy could fall into political and economic chaos; alarmed markets might trigger a banking crisis (see article). Such chaos, and any subsequent increase in austerity, could play to Euroscepticism in Italy and elsewhere. The Five Star Movement, which recently won control of Rome and Turin, two of Italy’s most important cities, has been fiercely critical of the euro and of the austerity policies associated with it. It has tiptoed away from the frank Euroscepticism of its founder, Beppe Grillo, but could return to it. The Northern League called for a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro two years ago, and might now up its demand to a full exit. It has not been doing particularly well at the polls of late, but an economic crisis could change that.

Ms Le Pen is on a roll Germany and the Netherlands will also have elections next year, and in both populists look set to do well even in the absence of a new crisis. In the Netherlands polls give the anti-EU and anti-immigrant Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, a comfortable lead; the Liberal party of the prime minister, Mark Rutte, languishes in second place, and the Labour Party, which governs with the Liberals in a centrist grand coalition, has fallen to below 10%. Though Mr Wilders will not win an outright majority, he may end up able to force a referendum on membership of the euro. On current form he seems unlikely to win it. But events could change things. Mr Rutte probably had that in mind when he emphasised in Brussels the heavy cost Britain—frequently his ally in internal EU debates—was paying for its choice: “England has collapsed politically, monetarily, constitutionally and economically.”

Obligations and privileges

Anti-EU movements have made less of an impact in Germany, which has long felt a special reparative responsibility for peaceful European integration. Alternative for Germany, which started life as a protest against the euro and bail-outs for indebted southern states, is polling at 10-14% and will no doubt break into the Bundestag in the 2017 elections. But though the party now takes a hard anti-immigrant stance, too, it still does not want to leave the EU.

If Germany is united in its support for the EU, though, it is to some extent divided over what to do next about Britain—as is the rest of the union. The Social Democratic Party, the junior partner in the grand coalition led by Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, wants to see action quickly. In this it is lining up with its fellow socialists in France, who want to see Britain beginning to pay for the “consequences” of its action as soon as possible. At the other end of the spectrum, the Netherlands and Poland are content to give Britain time, perhaps in the unspoken hope that it might yet reconsider. “The quality of the process is more important than timing,” says Konrad Szymanski, Poland’s minister for European affairs. Poland has long regarded Britain as the natural champion of market-oriented easterners, despite its voters’ turn against the free movement of workers.

The ever-cautious Mrs Merkel, keen to keep Britain as a close partner in both trade and geopolitics, tends to the go-slow-and-gentle side of the debate over how to negotiate Brexit (see article). “There is no reason now to be especially nasty during the negotiations,” she has said. But, as ever, there is also a limit to her willingness to accommodate Britain. “Anyone who wants to leave this family can’t expect to get rid of all obligations while holding on to privileges,” she said on June 28th.

Her stance underlines the fact that, despite differences over presentation and timing, at heart the EU has a fairly well settled, and tough, line on how to treat Britain. Serious splits in the coming months are unlikely. Possibilities such as the creation of alternative forms of membership for reluctant or problematic countries, such as some version of the “privileged partnership” once suggested for Turkey, would be hard to sell; Europe’s leaders are nervous about encouraging halfway houses for fear that existing members might find them attractive, too. “Married or divorced, but not something in between,” says Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s prime minister.

Distracting though dealing with the departing Brits may be, holding the remaining EU together will be the highest priority. As always, the instinctive response of many politicians to a crisis is “more Europe”. In a recent joint paper Jean-Marc Ayrault and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign ministers of France and Germany, called for closer co-operation on defence, security and intelligence-sharing; the joint patrolling of external borders; a common migration and asylum policy, the harmonisation of corporation tax; and euro-zone reforms. They said their countries would “move further towards political union in Europe.”

More Europe, more trouble

Their respective leaders, though, avoided endorsing such extensive commitments. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister and a longtime champion of integration, says that centralising EU powers further after Brexit would be “crazy”; if anything, he wants to clip the wings of the commission. Others go considerably further in their calls for the repatriation of powers, not to mention a bonfire of EU regulations (of which, in fairness, Brussels now produces far fewer than once it did). Poland has called for a more inter-governmental system, transferring powers from the commission to the European Council, where national leaders sit. More freewheeling governments, including those of the Netherlands and the Nordic states, would like the EU to focus on growth-promoting liberalisation of markets such as those for digital and other services. They know their cause will be weakened by Britain’s departure (see article).

Though its direction is not set, there is a general recognition that some kind of reform is unavoidable. At the same time, the obstacles seem insurmountable. Given that most EU policies are delicate compromises, it is hard to reach agreement on which should be altered or abandoned lest a house of cards come tumbling down. And it is inevitable that the core goals of some nations and governments will contradict those of others. France wants a more “social” Europe with higher minimum wages and the protection of workers across the union in order to prevent what it calls “social dumping”. Such ideas are anathema to German conservatives.

Divergent interests have precluded reform in the area which most cries out for it: the single currency. Options from a proper banking union to a common budget and joint Eurobonds were examined in a report last year by the “five presidents”—those of the European Council, the parliament, the European Central Bank, the Eurogroup and the commission. But they have mostly been ignored. Germany resists shared liabilities, fearing it will be left to pay the bill for the fecklessness of others. Instead it emphasises more central control of national economic policies; this is resented in its turn by those who chafe against austerity, such as France, Italy and, obviously, Greece. And any shift in focus to the euro-zone core raises the ire of the nine non-euro countries. The departure of Britain will not magically heal these divisions.

The EU is just one pillar of Europe’s post-war order. Might Brexit also undermine NATO, the military alliance that has its headquarters at the other end of Brussels and joins Europe to America? Philip Gordon, a former American assistant secretary of state in charge of European relations, says the Brexit vote is a “real setback”. Though Germany may be richer and France more gung-ho, no other big European country so often shares America’s basic instincts about the world and how to keep it prosperous and safe.

Daily chart: Britain votes to leave the European Union Within hours of the Brexit vote, Britain assured Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, that the country’s commitment to the alliance was unchanged. Jonathan Eyal of RUSI, a think-tank, believes that Britain will want to “puff up” its NATO role. Perhaps it will make new gestures towards the collective defence of NATO’s eastern border against a resurgent Russian military threat. Although a reduced British interest in European security would be deeply unwelcome in America, Brexit per se is being presented as something of passing moment. Barack Obama, who publicly (and perhaps counterproductively) urged Britain to remain in the EU, now says that if Britain ends up being “affiliated to Europe like Norway is” the average American would not notice much change. Many on the right greeted Brexit as a welcome display of independence by an old ally.

Russia rejoices

But the last thing that America needs is further economic turmoil and navel-gazing in a major trading partner and an indispensable ally when the “free West” needs to act as one, for instance by sanctioning Russia or Iran. This possibility of such weakened distraction is one reason Russia sees Brexit as a victory—even though it had little to do with it. Dmitry Trenin, the head of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a think-tank, also expects a Britain-free EU to be less fundamentally close to America—something Russia will welcome.

The Kremlin feels threatened by European institutions that attract former Soviet republics, such as Ukraine and Georgia, and is delighted to see them weakened. Dmitry Kiselev, a television presenter and Vladimir Putin’s chief propagandist, greeted the news with a rapture matched only by that of Ms Le Pen: “Brexit is a turning-point in the history of the EU…The number of EU members is declining. All questions about the expansion are closed for a very long time, if not for ever.”

In private, some in Brussels will doubtless agree. They may also nod their heads at the assessment of Yang Chengxu, a former Chinese ambassador to Vienna, that the Brexit vote “yet again reflected the drawbacks of Western democracy”. National referendums—in France and the Netherlands in 2005, in Ireland in 2008—have stymied integrationists before, though never on this scale. And some of the upcoming votes may well make their lives harder still. The answer, though, is not to avoid the voters. It is to fashion a Europe that they want to vote for. That is not an easy task; nor is it one, in the long run, to which there is a workable alternative.