The 27-member European Union is neither all that united nor a superstate, but those who would welcome its supranational bloat should gird themselves for a wake-up call. Even as the bloc tinkers with enlargement on its periphery, there is in the wake of nationalist legislative victories earlier this month a quiet unbuckling of the ideological belt that holds the European project together. 

What this portends for the future of Europe, from integration to the economy, is anybody’s guess. What is clear right now is that the winds of nationalism and the constraints of EU bureaucracy are on a collision course. It is part of a long process, with at least five recognizable signs. 

First, EU member countries are starting to go rogue on immigration. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán recently said that “It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens.” He said that after Brussels started fining Budapest about a million dollars a day for refusing to back the EU’s latest pact on immigration and asylum. 

This refusal, though, is bigger than Budapest. The fate of the pact, which is getting scant support from Poland, may lie with France. If the National Rally carries an absolute majority in an upcoming two-round snap vote, it would mean that the party’s anti-immigrant platform will be on the table.

As prime minister, Jordan Bardella has already said he would make deep cuts to France’s share of the EU’s budget. He would likely seek an opt-out on the asylum pact too — paving the way for smaller EU member states to do the same. 

French resistance to the European project will play a pivotal role in gradually undoing it.  It didn’t start with the National Rally’s performance in European parliamentary elections this month. It began with with the reunification of Germany in 1990, the first chink in the armor of what is at the core of European Unity — Franco-German cooperation. 

In the EU’s rush to enlargement that fact is often overlooked. Yet the idea for the European Community, the forerunner of the EU, and the European Coal and Steel Community before that, was essentially to keep Germany from marching into Paris again and starting another world war. In that respect, early integration efforts were successful.

The National Rally’s newfound credibility will accelerate the process of the long French adieu to Brussels — while Italy’s arrivederci has just begun. Following a deal that sidelined Prime Minister Meloni’s conservative coalition in the European Parliament, Signora Meloni said that for certain EU bigwigs “oligarchy is basically the only acceptable form of democracy.”

Part of the deal is basically a ploy by President Macron to rubber stamp a second term for the polarizing European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.  Signora Meloni also lambasted the EU as an ideologically-driven “bureaucratic giant.”

If there were a straw poll that asked Italians who does government better, Giorgia Meloni or Ms. von der Leyen, chances are pretty good Signora Meloni would come out on top.

Then of course there are the aftershocks of Brexit. With Great Britain’s chair no longer present at the European table, international conflicts — particularly in the northern hemisphere —  that might otherwise be defused easier tend to fester. Although some sidelined Parisians might beg to differ, the success of Brexit meant for Brussels the loss of Western Europe’s most important military power. 

Just consider the efforts to curtail attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis against ships plying the Red Sea. A few European countries have provided logistical support, but no one questions that it is a British and American-led effort, without which the situation on the seas would be even worse.

On the economic front too, the European Union is flirting with anemia. Anyone who thinks that the EU can seriously compete with America economically in the long run obviously hasn’t been shopping in Europe lately. Continental markets are so overregulated and consistently underperforming that prices for basic consumer goods like electric toothbrushes and toasters are invariably higher than they are in American stores — regardless of the provenance of the goods.

With a few exceptions like Carrefour in France, the concept of a Walmart or Costco where consumer goods of reliable quality can be had for a low price is totally foreign concept, so inured are European citizens to paying more while getting less. 

Little wonder that the German economy actually shrank last year and is projected to flatline in 2024. Now that summer is here, half of Germany or more seems to be on vacation on Mallorca or Crete. 

Speaking of holiday islands, there has been chatter in the press about high rates of economic growth in southern European countries like Portugal and Greece. Yet those numbers are driven largely by tourism, not more sustainable economic activities like high-tech and manufacturing. 

The fifth element, so to speak, of the EU’s impending unraveling is military wilt. A prominent Dutch historian, Luuk van Middelaar, has said that Europe currently faces a “century of humiliation” on par with the circumstances of 19th-century China. That assessment, if true, has major implications for future relations with Russia, Iran and its allies, and Communist China. 

The EU does want to ramp up its defense production, but after more than two years of a land war on the European continent its industry still lags. At the same time, as the centrifugal forces of nationalism strengthen, European efforts to formulate a common defense policy that actually functions in the real world are likely to wither. 

France, once again, is front and center. The National Rally clearly wants to “preserve full sovereignty” over the force de dissuasion — France’s nuclear deterrent. In the short run, that is a rebuke of Mr. Macron, whose position is that French defenses, nuclear weapons included, could be part of a broader EU defense strategy. 

Longer-term, and with a weakened (for sure) or absent (don’t rule it out) Mr. Macron, it means Paris will be throwing up one more barrier to Brussel. One so big that it will be impossible to not see it as a prelude to — oui — a Frexit.