The cacophany of voices from EU capitals is hard to filter.  A joint paper by the French and German foreign ministers is calling for a great leap forward to "political union", but neither have the support of their own leaders - let alone the Dutch, Nordics, Poles, Czechs, and others. The proposal seems surreal at a time of rising eurosceptic revolt everywhere.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission's president, is clearly bitter. "Brexit is not a friendly divorce, but then it was never a roaring love affair," he said.

"Whatever Juncker and a few federalist diehards in Brussels may think, most EU governments have woken up to the reality that the more Europe the push, the more euroscepticism they get," said Charles Grant from the Centre for European Reform.

"The knee-jerk reaction of the Commission is always to try to seize on any crisis to try to push for more Europe and closer integration, but they can dream on this time," he said. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel matters most and she has held out an olive branch to London, calling for patience - within limits - and talks conducted in a civil manner. "There is no need to be nasty," she said.

In essence, EU policy will be forged by an emerging "directorate" of Mrs Merkel, French leader Francois Hollande, and Italy's Matteo Renzi. But they are at odds with each other. The French and Italians want a radical shift in economic policy in response to Brexit, calling for a reflation blitz to break out of the low-growth trap. Germany will hear none of it. 

What is clear is that two cardinal objectives of post-Brexit policy are hard to reconcile: the EU cannot impose a harsh settlement on the UK, to prevent a "domino effect", while at the same time nursing the eurozone economy back to health. 

Failure to mend fences with London risks an economic crisis that would expose the long-festering pathologies of monetary union.  "There is a cocktail of factors that could lead to disintegration," said Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy's finance minister. "We face a double reaction from Brexit: financial and political." 

David Fuller's view

Here is a PDF of AE-P’s article.

David Cameron, in discussions with the leaders of 27 other EU countries, has attributed his inability to lead Remain to victory in the referendum, to Europe’s failure to control the migrant crisis. Cameron may have felt that was the most tactful criticism.  However, Brexit was the eventual response to myriad EU policies which stealthily removed national sovereignty over several decades.

The EU is now in turmoil and the only way it can limit Brexit damage is by being conciliatory toward the UK in forthcoming negotiations.  That may feel like a difficult pill to swallow but it might just keep the UK in a looser, less politically driven and centrally controlled EU, largely restoring self-governance to individual countries.  We will see over the next year or two but from the EU’s perspective, abandoning the grandiose ambition of a European superstate, for which there is little popular support, is surely preferable to a breakup of the European Union.