Thread by @pmdfoster

So today, and all this week, @Telegraph is publishing a piece on the 'Future of Europe'.

First up, it's not a bashing exercise. It's a serious look at where the EU finds itself as one its largest members departs.

A fulcrum moment... 1/thread

telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/1…

@Telegraph I'm first up, reporting from the conservative heartlands of Poland (Kobylin-borzymy) and asking what the EU does about the newly assertive eastern states, who are not homogenising as everyone assumed...turns out history is not dead. /2

@Telegraph I ask how the EU's liberal establishment - the one that got the 2015 migrant crisis so catastrophically wrong - should respond. Should it:

Confront: (Article 7) and risk a backlash

Check (Court cases, cash cuts)

Accommodate (and relegate to outer ring) /3

@Telegraph That is kind of the conundrum that faces the EPP with Orban.

Should they, as @guyverhofstadt tells me "make a stand" and throw the Orban cuckoo from the EPP nest?

Or is keeping him in the tent safer in the long run? /4

@Telegraph @guyverhofstadt For a long time, the top EU officials would say they felt Orban was containable..and it was Poland's Jaroslaw Kaczynski who was the real threat/loose cannon. That was long Berlin's view.

Now, as a senior German diplomat tells me, the calculation is less secure.../5

@Telegraph @guyverhofstadt Suddenly Orban is in the export business...squaring off with Macron at next May's EU elections, hanging out with @matteosalvinimi ....and when you look at poll numbers, you wonder whether @EmmanuelMacron can deliver? Where are those EU-wide En Marche events? /6

@Telegraph @guyverhofstadt @matteosalvinimi @EmmanuelMacron These are massively important questions.

Like it or not, the future of the EU is the future of the UK too.

#Brexit doesn't change that. Those want the EU to crash and burn are simply blinded by ideology.

A zero-sum #Brexit is a disaster for that reason. /7

@Telegraph @guyverhofstadt @matteosalvinimi @EmmanuelMacron This really is a fulcrum moment.

UK leaves - UNSC seat holder, finance capital, nuclear power, etc

Populism rises - Sweden, CEE, Austria, Italy...UK

Nato wanes: and it didn't start with Donald Trump

Enlargement is no longer an axiomatic good. /8

@Telegraph @guyverhofstadt @matteosalvinimi @EmmanuelMacron So we'll look at each in turn.

- Today populism and EU's cultural divide

- Tues: @NickSquires1 on immigration: does Europe need to build a wall? If not, what then?

- Weds: @justinhuggler is out with 'combined' German-Dutch forces pondering 'life after Nato' /9

Thurs: @Annaisaac is in southern Eurozone looking at how EU economies are no longer converging, and whether the costs of a 'lost decade' can ever be recovered. You'll learn a new word: "hysteresis" /10

@Annaisaac Fri: @RolandOliphant is in the Balkans asking, if enlargement is dead, who is vying for control of Europe's backyard, and what Turkish, Russian and Chinese interests mean for the new local great game. /11

@Annaisaac @RolandOliphant And finally, on Saturday, @h_e_samuel goes out on the doorsteps with En Marche campaigners and asks whether Macron can really ride to the EU's rescue...or at least the EU as its founding Western liberal establishment understands it. /12

@Annaisaac @RolandOliphant @H_E_Samuel These pieces are reporting, not opinion.

They are worth your time. All the authors will be answering questions at 1pm UK time each day.

Enjoy. Lots to think about. ENDS