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commentary on the EU Constitution vote. KwC Europe's
Dream Deferred: The
Union was conceived to ensure an end to war. But Europeans have new worries,
and fresh battle lines have formed. By
Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, June
13, 2005 Issue In the Gare de l'Est,
one of the elegant old train stations of Paris, there are reminders of why the
European Union was created. They are the plaques commemorating the dead. Today
tourists coming from Germany and points east take little notice of the
inscriptions that call on them to remember the thousands of French who left
this station for the "torture and death camps" of Nazi Germany in
World War II, and the "70,000 Jews, among them 11,000 children," who
were sent to their extermination. Then Europe's borders were lines of death.
Today they barely seem to exist. The trains do not stop at the frontier. Nobody
asks for the papers of the passengers onboard. Tourists, business people,
commuters and students buy their tickets with the same euro currency in Paris
they would use in Berlin or Rome or Madrid. Asked what those plaques might have
to do with the current vision of a single European Union, 18-year-old Jean
Mayant says, "I don't see any relationship. Those are from ancient
times." Max Kohnstamm, 91, one
of the founding fathers of what has become the European Union, remembers when
all the bitter memories were still fresh. "There was an enormously strong
feeling after 1945: 'This cannot happen again'," he said from his home in Belgium's
Ardennes forest. And for 60 years that sentiment helped drive Europe toward ever-closer
cooperation and unity.
But last week it was suddenly obvious that as the bad old memories have faded, no clear
vision of the future has taken their place. In two stunning votes, first in France, then
in the Netherlands, citizens massively rejected ratification of a European
constitution that required approval by all 25 member states. After five
decades' moving toward a more complete Union, the European experiment has been
plunged into serious confusion. The consequences are important not only
for the people of Europe, but for the United States. Despite bitter disputes with France and
Germany before the Iraq invasion in 2003, Washington has come to rely on the European Union
over the last year as "a kind of lodestar," in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's
words, that inspires and attracts democratic movements from Ukraine to the
Middle East. "Everybody has a stake in Europe," she said last week,
adding in measured language: "We understand that this has been a difficult
period and that there will be some period of reflection going forward, but we
continue to hope for an outward-looking Europe, not an inward-looking
one." At European Union
headquarters in Brussels, top politicians were shaken, even teary-eyed, as they
groped for explanations. "The constitution was—is—we don't even know what
tense to use when we talk about it," said one staffer. Newspaper headlines
fueled a sense of panic: EUROPE IN TURMOIL, trumpeted the Financial Times;
STATE OF SHOCK, proclaimed the Nouvel Observateur. The euro spiraled down to an
eight-month low against the dollar, and Italy's Labor minister even raised the
possibility his country would go back to using the lira. "We are seeing a
return of economic nationalism," says French author and economic analyst Erik
Izraelewicz. Many people want more protection for their farms and businesses.
They are suspicious of immigrants, resentful of the countries that have
recently joined the Union, fearful about the prospect that populous Muslim
Turkey will someday be a member. "There is no longer the binding factor of
'peace,' which is now considered a given; there are no longer enemies to the
east," says Izraelewicz. "It is an end of the Europe of the first 50
years. A new Europe must be built." As the European Union
moves from unconvincing damage control to finding a new way forward, few people
agree on the solutions—or even the problem. "The 'no' forces said they
were not against Europe, just against this Europe," says Ben Crum, a
political scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam. "The problem is,
it isn't clear what 'Europe' means. Some want a retreat, others want to move
forward in a different direction. But I don't hear many people saying we should
stay where we are." On the one hand, there
is what's been called "Core
Europe," led by
France and Germany, which cherishes a continent of protectionist social-welfare
states. Then there's "New Europe," led by postindustrial Britain,
which is determined to free up European economies to better meet the challenge
of emerging powers like China and India. When the European Union was enlarged
by 10 members a year ago, taking its population to 450 million and giving it a
combined GDP slightly larger than that of the United States, the old core
countries felt threatened. France and Germany, with unemployment stuck around
10 percent and pension systems sinking deeply into debt, are ill equipped to
address the problem of massive immigration and the competition of cheaper
labor. Nor are the richer countries, with stalled economies, happy about paying
subsidies to the poorer ones, which are growing faster. The challenge of
reconciling these differences among 25 members was always enormous, and the
constitution, with its hundreds of pages of confusing compromise solutions, was
often almost incomprehensible. But with the referendum votes in France and the
Netherlands, the alternative appears to be indecision and further stagnation.
Elections are planned in several of Europe's largest countries: Germany this
fall, Italy within a year and France in 2007. While these electoral dramas are
playing out, defining any clear new direction for Europe probably will require
"two or three years of reflection," says John Palmer, director of the
Brussels-based European Policy Center. Yet, the pace of global change continues
to grow. Hence Rice's real concern that Europe will become too
"inward-looking." "The Bush administration is increasingly interested in
a Europe that is united and strong," says Simon Serfaty, of the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. From the
Balkans to Afghanistan, the Sudan and even Southeast Asia, Europe has been
called on to help end conflicts and restore stability. It has led the way in
negotiations aimed to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, while its
funding underwrites much of the Middle East peace process. So there's
frustration in D.C. at the distraction of this constitutional crisis. "At
the very moment the president said, 'Hey, EU, I need you'," says Serfaty,
"Europe is replying, 'Whoops, we have to clean the house and pack our
luggage before we get on board.' And it's not that Bush is being impatient,
it's that the issues have a real urgency." Many will strive now to find a silver
lining. However strained European integration may be at the moment, it is much
farther along than it was during its last big political crisis in the early
1990s. "There's
actually quite a lot in the bag, now," says Mark Leonard of the
London-based Centre for European Reform: the open borders, the widespread use
of a single currency. The constitution rejected by France and the Netherlands
would have given Europe a more clearly identifiable face, replacing the
"rotating presidency" that changes from country to country each six
months, with a president named for 2� years. There would also be a single
foreign minister and a diplomatic corps. "The constitution would give us
additional instruments," says an aide to Javier Solana, currently the
leading foreign-policy representative in Brussels. "But we have lived
without those instruments before." For Max Kohnstamm, the
nonagenarian who helped found the organizations in the 1950s that eventually
became the EU, the setbacks of the last week seem almost like business as
usual. None of the founding fathers had any illusions that it would be easy to
build Europe through consensus and common interests, instead of war and
conquest. But that didn't deter them then, and shouldn't now, he says. "I
have seen so many crises—and seen so many crises overcome—that I am absolutely
certain that this process will go on." Whatever the present Union's
failings, the coming generation can safely recall the war-ravaged Europe that
existed before 1945 as nothing more than ancient history. With
Stryker McGuire in London and Tracy McNicoll and Eric Pape in Paris � 2005 Newsweek, Inc. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8101418/site/newsweek/ |
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