Make Europe Boring Again!

FOR MUCH OF the past decade, if you asked a Eurocrat: “What’s on your mind?”, the response was usually dramatic. At the start of the decade the euro teetered on the edge of collapse. In the middle of it, Greece came close to being kicked out. A crisis flared when nearly 3m asylum-seekers arrived from Syria and other troublespots. Shortly after that, Britain, then the EU’s second-largest economy, voted to leave without a serious plan for doing so. Meanwhile, populists from across the spectrum itched to upturn the comfy order that those in Brussels were attempting to build. In short, life in Brussels was exciting. For years, officials had treated the city like a visit to a proctologist: necessary but disagreeable. Suddenly, the EU’s de facto capital became like a political rollercoaster—terrifying, but strangely thrilling, too.

Those days are over. Brussels has become reassuringly dull again. Ask a passing Eurocrat what’s up and the answer is prosaic: haggling over the EU’s budget. When EU leaders next visit Brussels on February 20th, it will be to discuss the bloc’s spending. Britain’s departure has left a hole of €60bn in the EU’s funding. Spread over seven years and between 27 countries, the sum becomes easier to swallow. The upshot is that, to keep spending roughly the same, EU countries are being asked to cough up between 1% and 1.1% of gross national income—only a whisker more than last year.