At the same time, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary are currently locked in a stand-off with the EU over its desire that they each accept thousands of migrants from outside the EU. They do not accept that the EU has the right to tell them to do so, raising fundamental questions about its legitimacy.

Italy, meanwhile, has spent another summer dealing with the twin nightmares of migration: first, the cost and impracticality of having to process and house those who land by boat on its shores; second, the unimaginable tragedy of having to cope with those who drown en route. EU chiefs cannot be said to have strained every sinew to confront this problem. Where is their solution?

And then we come to Spain.

It is a country which has done marvellously well out of the EU in financial terms. But on Sunday we saw how deeply divided it is as the people of the highly prosperous region of Catalonia voted in a referendum on whether to secede.

900 men and women of all ages were allegedly injured by police using brute force (including rubber bullets and dragging women from polling stations by their hair) to try to stop the poll going ahead.