Free exchange of research money has no requirement to be connected to immigration or trade policy, these are unrelated things. Countries can easily collaborate

Free exchange of research money has no requirement to be connected to immigration or trade policy, these are unrelated things. Countries can easily collaborate on research without something like the EU, as evidenced by the number of CS papers I read that are for example USA/Israeli collaborations. The EU is failing because its blind, ideological insistence on connecting lots of unrelated things together to make an artificial club (really: the beginnings of a new country). The EU's petulant "retaliation" is treated by far too many as a given, when in reality it is a policy choice driven by a quasi-religious devotion to an abstract vision.