The turbulence created by the vote for Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump has left many craving a bit of predictability. And while Russian President’s Vladimir Putin’s military maneuvers may be familiar, they’re hardly reassuring.

So there is something comforting about the European Union choosing not to punish Portugal or Spain for breaching its rules on budgetary discipline.

A decision to give the two countries more time to bring their deficits down was waved through by the Council of Ministers last week, on a proposal from the European Commission.

In refraining from punishment, the EU treads a familiar path. Most famously and formatively, France and Germany were spared penalties in 2003, in the early years of the Stability and Growth Pact. Since then, the Commission has occasionally threatened retribution, but the Council has routinely supplied mercy.

The treatment meted out to Spain and Portugal amounts, at least on the surface, to a return to normalcy — in the European context, a détente between the EU institutions in Brussels and national governments.

Broadly speaking, the most serious clashes between the EU and the national governments that make up its membership take one of two forms. A country can find itself outvoted when legislation is being created. Or it can be punished for failing to comply after the legislation has been passed.

Institutional reforms have also introduced ways for dissenting minorities to be left behind — or at least for majorities to forge ahead without necessarily obliging grumblers to follow.

Over the years, the EU has gone to surprising lengths to avoid forcing the will of a majority on the minority. It is deeply engrained in the collective psyche of the European Council that the EU should respect the special interests of a particular state.

During the increasingly frantic attempts to avert Brexit, the EU’s theologians made reference to the Ioannina Compromise of 1994 (restraining the majority’s rights to outvote the minority), the opt-outs of the Maastricht treaty of 1992, the Luxembourg Compromise of 1966 (where a majority vote is possible, still a unanimous vote is worth waiting for) — itself a response to the "empty chair" crisis of the 1960s when Charles De Gaulle withdrew the French government from participation in the Council of Ministers.

Institutional reforms have also introduced ways for dissenting minorities to be left behind — or at least for majorities to forge ahead without necessarily obliging grumblers to follow.

But once legislation has been passed, the EU has been much readier to resort to confrontation. The question of what to do about a state that fails or refuses to comply with the EU’s rules puts particular pressure on the European Commission, which is supposed to be guardian, watchdog and enforcer — with the option of resorting to the European Court of Justice.

The bulk of enforcement disputes pass unnoticed outside Brussels, but some policy areas are by their nature highly politically charged. The rules on fiscal discipline are among the most sensitive.

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Some critics of the leniency shown to Spain and Portugal accuse the Commission of shirking its duties. Whether or not fines are desirable, they argue, the Commission should not have ignored its treaty-imposed obligation to present the case against Spain and Portugal.

The architects of the Stability and Growth Pact had hoped that enshrining fiscal propriety as routine law would prevent government deficits and debts from becoming headline-grabbing confrontations. Enforcing budgetary discipline was intended to become as routine as fining national administrations that do not comply with the rules of the Common Agricultural Policy or suspending payments from the Structural Funds.

In practice, management of national budgets is too important and too sensitive to be delegated by national leaders to the technocrats.

Once France and Germany had refused to take their medicine in 2003, the Stability and Growth Pact was holed below the waterline. Yet the interconnected nature of the eurozone — in which one country’s free-riding harms the credibility of the whole — obliged the EU to reinforce its mechanisms for exerting peer pressure.

The limits of such pressure were tested in July 2015 in one of the most serious confrontations ever between the EU and a national government, when Alexis Tsipras’ government fought with the European Council over the terms of an international bail-out.

The lesson of that showdown was an old one: For EU institutions, victories are almost always Pyrrhic and damage to the EU’s reputation is guaranteed. The institutions embark on any such trial of strength with a national government at a disadvantage because the latter is generally perceived — at least by its national electorate — as having the greater democratic legitimacy. When a confrontation occurs, citizens side instinctively with their own government. Rare is the national leader who is prepared to submit to the EU without railing against injustice.

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Other confrontations are looming. Just as sensitive may be one over human rights and the rule of law in Poland. Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union allows action against a national government in the case of a serious breach of the EU’s democratic values. But an Article 7 procedure is so serious, it is almost unusable. Instead, the Commission is pursuing a more technocratic, relatively low-key procedure.

What is in doubt is whether Polish politicians will cooperate in keeping the dispute toned down. Will they treat this as a procedural matter, the equivalent of an argument over state aid, or will they ratchet it up into a slanging-match over their fitness to be in the EU?

The Commission will be uncomfortably aware that such disputes might get entangled in the already contentious agreement made with Turkey to restrict the flow of migrants reaching the EU. How does the Commission’s defense of democratic values square with its readiness to cut a deal with Turkey, whose record on human rights and freedom of speech was already shaky before July’s attempted coup triggered further repression?

The decision not to confront Spain and Portugal may not be a return to normalcy, but a symptom of some new normal.

Another flashpoint may be a dispute over state aid to rescue the Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has shown no sign of shrinking from confrontation. France too is readying itself for a fight with the Commission over proposals to reform copyright rules.

Old Brussels hands might be reassured by the prospects of such contests. After all, previous Commission administrations fought bruising battles with Germany and France over the restructuring of their banking sectors, and France has been arguing the importance of its cultural exception since the earliest days of the EU.

The notes of familiarity may, however, be deceptive.

Previous showdowns took place when the EU’s future was not in doubt, its membership was growing, and its market was broadening. Nor were Euroskeptic parties the electoral threat that they now are in France, Germany and elsewhere. The vote for Brexit has also changed the context, in ways that we are only beginning to glimpse. Will it push the remaining 27 states closer together, or will it open up new fissures in the EU?

The decision not to confront Spain and Portugal may not be a return to normalcy, but a symptom of some new normal, one in which the center is weak and leniency is the less dangerous course. Yet if the center does not stick up for the rule of EU law, and is not prepared to bring errant governments back into line, what will hold the EU together? The hard lesson that the national governments will have to re-learn is that what gives the EU its special character is general compliance with mutually agreed law.

Tim King writes POLITICO's Brussels Sketch.