The European Union faces so many different crises that it has been—until now—impossible to predict the precise catalyst for its likely demise. The obvious candidates for destroying the EU include the looming refugee crisis, the
tottering banking structure that is resistant to both bail-outs and bail-ins, the public distrust of the political establishment, and the nearly immobilized EU institutions.
But the most immediate crisis that could spell the EU’s doom is Prime Minister David Cameron’s failure to wrest from Brussels concessions that he needs in order to placate the increasingly euroskeptic British public. Prime Minister Cameron has failed because the EU cannot grant the necessary concessions. There are three special reasons, as well as one underlying reality, that have made Cameron’s task impossible.
First, a profound reform of the EU-British relationship, which Cameron initially promised, was always impossible, because it required a “treaty change” in each of the twenty-eight EU member-states, and that could not happen without approval by either parliamentary votes or, and this is especially difficult, national referenda that Brussels dreads. There is simply no appetite in Europe to run such risks in order to appease the UK.
Second, Cameron was willing to settle for a compromise, but failed to obtain most of what he needed, because Brussels fears that other member states will follow the British example and demand similar accommodations. That would result in a “smorgasbord EU” in which each country could pick and choose what serves its own best interests. In other words, it would make a mockery of “an ever closer Europe.”
And so, Cameron ended up with what one Conservative Member of Parliament,
Jacob Rees-Mogg, called a "thin gruel [of a reform] has been further watered down."
The EU Will Likely Implode