The risk here should be obvious. It will create a gulf between the EU’s core and its more sceptical members. What the federalists miss is that this is what helped turn British Euroscepticism into an electoral force. Britain began to feel increasingly marginalised in the EU, despite its opt-outs and rebates. The UK engaged less with decision-makers in Brussels and became more of a passenger than a driver. That fed resentment.

When I raised this prospect at an event held by the Bruegel Institute in Brussels recently, I was given two answers. The first, by Italian Europe minister Sandro Gozi, was that it was the EU’s absence in, for example, protecting its borders that drove Euroscepticism, rather than its presence. The second, by Left-wing MEP Pervenche Berès, dismissed Euroscepticism as a “Tory spat” fed by a “backlash against openness”.

Mr Gozi might have been right when it comes to policing Italy’s borders, but Ms Berès’ answer worried me. She, and many federalists, still fundamentally take belief in the EU project for granted. Those states that don’t sign up to Mr Juncker’s great leap forwards in integration should, in her view, have little cause for complaint so long as the door is always open for them to join in the EU’s projects at a later date.