It is often said that the British were the first to leave the European Union and that the EU, because of its sole experience with, and focus on, integration, is not used to dealing with this kind disintegration at all.
This is, strictly speaking, not true: the Algerians and Greenlanders left the club already long before Brexit came along. Both had become members of the European Communities (EC), the EU's predecessor, as part of their colonial 'motherlands'.
In 1962 and 1985, resp...
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Caroline de Gruyter is a Europe correspondent and columnist for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. This article has been adapted from one of her columns in NRC.