A Korean economist said an unfashionable thing across a Parisian lunch table last week: “Europe is the greatest.” This economist, who had grown up in South Korea and travelled widely in Asia, who had studied and worked in the US and was now based in Europe, had no doubt where he would choose to be born in his next incarnation if such a choice were possible. The quality of life, the responsiveness of its democratic institutions, the civility of its societies and the richness of its cultures led him to one answer: Europe.

The economist’s confidence in Europe’s future, though, does not seem to be shared by many Europeans. Core Europe, at least, is experiencing one of its periodic existentialist crises. Germany is going through an almost masochistic bout of self-denigration ahead of its parliamentary elections on September 18. France has plunged into pessimism amid high unemployment and economic slowdown. An opinion poll published by Ifop this week recorded that only 30 per cent of respondents were optimistic about the future, compared with 58 per cent last December. In Italy, politicians publicly question whether the euro was such a good idea as hundreds of thousands of small investors fume about their losses in corporate scandals.