In January 2001, I arrived in Brussels with several firm and unfavourable convictions about the EU. I believed that most ordinary Europeans felt far more loyalty to their nation than to Europe. I thought that steadily enlarging the powers of Brussels was undemocratic and dangerous. I reckoned that in a crisis, nationalist instincts would come to the fore. I suspected that the EU's new currency – the euro – was liable to run into trouble. And I believed that the Brussels-based elite was a “new class” that had confused its own interests with those of the continent of Europe.

Eight years on, I look back at these old prejudices – and smile at my foresight. The past few years have provided a graphic demonstration of the feeble popular support for the European project. A proposed EU constitution was rejected in referendums in France and the Netherlands – then promptly repackaged as the Lisbon treaty and rejected again, this time by the voters of Ireland. But “Lisbon” will still be shoved through, one way or another. This is a pretty shoddy exercise.

The strain of the economic crisis is indeed opening up divisions within the Union. An emergency EU summit was called this weekend to combat protectionism. Several of the new EU members from central Europe are facing banking and financial crises – and the older members have refused to bail them out. The Hungarian prime minister warns of a “new iron curtain” descending across Europe. Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, is worried that Europe is once again splitting into two.