Pascal Lamy, long considered among the elite of EU elites and a key figure behind some of Europe’s biggest political triumphs, may soon become a dissident: He’s part of that dwindling group of people who believe the Union should move ever closer together.

“I am among those who think that the Union is not going to pieces,” says Lamy. “It is a shock that we will be able to surmount only by integrating more.”

A tall and voluble Frenchman with an intense gaze and piercing intellect, Lamy secured his political reputation as head of cabinet to Jacques Delors, perhaps the most-powerful-ever president of the European Commission.

Together the two men — one in public, the other behind-the-scenes — made their mark during an era in the late 1980s and early 1990s when EU integration was a series of success stories: the Schengen treaty, which allowed millions of citizens to travel across borders in Europe; the creation of the single market; and the Treaty of Maastricht, which increased political integration and established today’s “European Union.”

“There is less political energy, and there is less political energy because the legitimacy of EU integration has shrunk.”

Two decades later, the bold Delors and Lamy vision for Europe is in tatters: The EU is at breaking point as a series of ongoing crises have challenged the legitimacy of those landmark decisions, and spurred a rise in populist and Euroskeptic parties.

On a recent afternoon in Brussels, Lamy, who now works for a think-tank and writes books, sketches out his explanation for the current turmoil in an hour-long conversation over glasses of water at the office of his Foundation for Progressive Studies (he’s a vice-president).

“We have not managed to create the chemistry our founding fathers had in mind,” he says. “We’ve created de facto solidarity, but it has not yet been followed by enough political and institutional integration. There isn’t yet a European political space people belong to. That is the real problem.”

Unlike the doomsayers warning of the end of the European Union, at least in its current form, Lamy says he believes the bloc will endure growing pains as it learns “negative lessons” from the EU migration crisis, the prolonged and difficult debate over a possible British exit from the EU, and its much-criticized handling of the conflict in Ukraine.

The crises “inevitably educate us,” he says.

Commission politics

Born near Paris and whose family has roots in Normandy, Lamy had a long career as a technocrat, first as a finance inspector, then as an adviser to Delors at the French finance ministry and later as his Commission chef de cabinet for 10 years. In 1999, Lamy stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight to become the EU’s trade commissioner. He later served two terms as head of the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

He still keeps a hand in the political world. In Brussels last week, he met with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief of staff, Martin Selmayr. Lamy says the meetings were not about any particular subject and were just part of an effort to keep his finger on the Brussels pulse.

Lamy says that the current European Commission — replacing the old, collegial arrangement with a structure that includes several gatekeeper vice presidents — had a “well-controlled political management.” The system set up by Juncker to concentrate power in the hands of his team at the expense of the other commissioners, he adds, “seems to be working although at a serious bureaucratic cost.”

The new political focus of the Commission hasn’t help it deal with the migration crisis, as several countries have resisted participating in the EU’s controversial policy to relocate asylum-seekers. That’s been a tough sell, Lamy says, because “the EU has lost 50 percent of public support in 12 years.”

“There is less political energy,” he says, “and there is less political energy because the legitimacy of EU integration has shrunk.”

Border dispute

The idea of open borders — once seen as a crowning triumph of the EU — is now political anathema in many countries. Even as several countries try to “make concessions” to public opinion by re-imposing border controls, “nobody thinks an internal border will change anything,” says Lamy.

“It’s like when you put young policemen in the streets to show them that we are reducing the terrorist threat,” he says. “What reduces more of the risk are good intelligence systems, and databases that are shared by all the countries.”

If a Brexit does occur, its impact on the EU project would be “catastrophic.”

As unease grows over how Britons will vote in a referendum on the country’s EU membership, Lamy says he’s confident the chances of the U.K. leaving the bloc were “low.”

If a Brexit does occur, he adds, its impact on the EU project would be “catastrophic” — dramatically undermining the bloc’s will to build a common security and defense union.

“Who can say that we will be able to build it without the Brits?” Lamy asks. “They have a diplomatic system and a knowledge of the world that is astonishing.”

The former EU trade commissioner and WTO chief says the Commission was having a tough time selling the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement to the EU public during the ongoing negotiations between Brussels and Washington.

“If you give the impression of reducing protectionism,” he says, “you lose public support. If Germany is massively against TTIP, it is not because it is protectionist country, but because it is ‘precautionist.’ It is not the same.”

For Lamy the answer to that problem, as with migration and other issues facing the EU, is for the Commission to continue to be bold and political.

“There are still a lot of my people who were small and are now big” in the institution, he says. “A lot of them are still in the system.”