Stuck in the middle of the EU

摘要

NOT MUCH happens in Gadheim, a Bavarian hamlet of 89 souls. A handful of part-time farmers cultivate wheat, barley and rapeseed. A hotel trains apprentices in gardening and carpentry. Birds tweet, cars whoosh by. The landscape undulates, mildly. But Britain's impending departure from the European Union has disturbed the rustic peace. Whenever the club's composition changes, the French National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information (IGN) calculates its new geographical centre. Over the years eastward enlargements have tugged the point from France to Belgium and then southern Germany; since 2013, when Croatia joined, it has sat in Western-grund, a town in north-west Bavaria. But in April 2017 the ign judged that Brexit would shift the eu's centre 70km farther east, to Gadheim.