Next Step: Putting Europe Back Together
By ROGER COHEN
Published: June 5, 2005
A CLASH of ideas, of ideologies almost, is looming in Europe between a British leader whose fortunes have been slightly revived and the crippled leaders of France and Germany.
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A certain Europe died last week - the well-meaning, outward-reaching, economically torpid continent that had tried to forge a new European patriotism despite the anger engendered by lost jobs, lost growth and lost confidence.
No thank you, said tens of millions of Europeans in France and the Netherlands, rejecting a proposed constitution that seemed to them to encapsulate a European project lacking identity, prosperity or even clear geography. Where, they asked, will Europe end? And they gave a clear enough answer: not in Turkey.
But what they wanted in place of this geopolitical smudge was less clear. When Tony Blair, the British prime minister, meets President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany at a European Union summit on June 16, they will begin what amounts to the great European salvage operation: an attempt to define some new idea for a Europe long defined by the push for ever closer union.
"They will try to cherry-pick some of the better ideas from the constitution, like a European foreign minister or streamlined voting to make decision-making with 25 members possible," said William Drozdiak, the president of the American Council on Germany.
What they will not say officially is that the constitution is dead - but for all intents and purposes it is. Britain, almost certainly, will not even bother to hold its planned referendum on the matter. The notion that France and the Netherlands might vote again (and again, until they get it right?) appears far-fetched.
Also likely to be passed over in silence is the underlying European clash that will define the continent's direction in the coming years: the one between what Mr. Chirac calls an "ultraliberal conception of Europe" - a Gallic twist on the classical definition of "liberal" to render the idea of unfettered Anglo-Saxon capitalism - and what is sometimes known as Rhineland capitalism, namely a market economy with a high degree of social protection as practiced in France and Germany.
Mr. Blair embodies the former: the British economy is booming, unemployment is less than 5 percent, and soaring housing prices have given a feeling of prosperity. The French and German leaders, despite some stabs at labor and pension reform, embody the Rhineland model: unemployment in both countries is more than 10 percent, growth has evaporated, and the long deflationary spiral has taken on an almost Japanese air.
The conclusion to draw from this clash may seem evident, but it's not to everyone. For some in France, including a resurgent left-wing movement, the country's travails only demonstrate the need for more protection from free-market practices elsewhere in Europe.
True debate is almost absent because Mr. Chirac, supposedly a right-of-center politician, has spent much of his time trashing the market. "Mr. Chirac, in his infinite mediocrity, has run a government well to the left of Blair, a Labor politician, and also to the left of Schröder, a Social Democrat," said Alain Finkielkraut, a French writer and philosopher. "The trouble with this country is that those who deplore unemployment promote the very rigid system that perpetuates it."
One lesson of the no votes is that a system which does not promote prosperity is doomed. But whether Mr. Blair, whose star has brightened in the gloom of France and Germany, will be able to convince his European partners to change is unclear.
One factor that may work in his favor is that Angela Merkel, the Christian Democratic leader in Germany, seems likely to be elected chancellor in the fall. Having lived most of her life in what was East Germany, she sees certain merits in the market. She is also a fan of America. France may therefore grow more isolated.
But the waves of leftist sentiment, rightist nationalist stirrings and sheer boiling disgruntlement - all of them buoyed by the success of the no vote - are too powerful to be contained easily and are not confined to France.
"National sentiments in Europe have been underestimated," said Ezra Suleiman, a political scientist at Princeton University.
It was one thing when Europe seemed to offer the possibility of becoming a cohesive, even a federal, economic and political force. But "deepening" was sacrificed to "broadening."
The euro was meant to inspire people. It was conceived not merely as a currency but as a means to a political end - some sort of United States of Europe - that in turn would guarantee the long-term success of a shared currency. But the euro has been marooned without its political counterpart.
As a result, further enlargement to include Romania and Bulgaria by 2007 will be more controversial, and enlargement to include Turkey looks doomed.
The Bush administration will continue to push for Turkish membership, at a time of tension between the Christian and Islamic worlds.
But in this and other matters, the administration is likely to find a distracted Europe. Just at the moment when the administration had been hoping to reap the fruits of its concerted push to improve ties with the European Union - in the form of critical assistance in Iran and on the final-status talks set to begin on Kosovo - it confronts a continent consumed with its own affairs.
Difficulties have been overcome before in Europe. The continent's half-century-old push toward ever greater union has often hit obstacles - de Gaulle's "non" to Britain, Margaret Thatcher's "I want my money back," Mr. Chirac's advice to countries like Poland to "shut up" over Iraq - but in recent days the whole project has been called into question for the first time.
And only in these most recent votes has a disturbing trend emerged: young people have scant enthusiasm for the Europe being offered. In France the only age group to vote in favor of the constitution was age 65 and over.
The European Union was born as much through an understanding of the shared cataclysm of the past as through a vision of the future. For the young, that past has faded. The future looks fuzzy. It will only begin to come into focus if the three major powers - Britain, Germany and France - can cross the ideological gulf that divides them. For now, that looks unlikely |
