BRUSSELS, DISPATCH — Prediction markets have placed a sixteen-percent probability on at least one nation departing the European Union before the decade closes — odds, this correspondent notes, that would cause any respectable bookmaker to prick up his ears. One-in-six is not the whisper of cranks; it is the considered arithmetic of traders putting real money on the table.

The stakes are considerable. A departure would reprise the Brexit ordeal on fresh soil, threatening the euro, single-market commerce, and the very myth of irreversible integration that Brussels has long traded upon. Hungary's persistent quarrels with EU governance and Slovakia's wayward drift draw the heaviest scrutiny on the trading floor, though market consensus assigns no single culprit. Volume on Kalshi reached twenty thousand dollars in a single day — modest, yet sufficient to suggest the question is alive.

Should the EU extend financial accommodations or broker a quiet political settlement with its restless eastern members, traders would almost certainly revise these figures downward in short order.