The surprise “no” vote put European unity in jeopardy. Until then, the Maastricht Treaty had looked like a shoo-in. Laboriously negotiated over 12 months, it provides for a European economic and monetary union, including a powerful central bank and a single currency by 1999, common approaches to foreign policy and defense, and centralized authority in such areas as labor relations and the environment. Dismayed European Community leaders put on a show of unity: they refused to renegotiate any new agreement with Copenhagen and vowed to continue their own ratification procedures come what may-piously suggesting that Denmark might reverse its position sometime in the future. A curt Jacques Delors, chairman of the European Commission and architect of the Maastricht Treaty, conceded the Danish referendum has “slowed the whole European process.
In fact, it has ground to a halt. By rejecting Maastricht, the Danes unleashed a widely felt anxiety about the idea of a federal Europe. In Britain, 70 Tory M.P.s who had ratified the treaty only weeks ago signed a statement calling for reconsideration. In France, opponents of Francois Mitterrand vowed to bring down both the president and the treaty in this fall’s referendum. In Ireland, anti-abortion forces were mobilizing to defeat Maastricht in the June 18 vote. And in Germany, the EC’s richest state and the most ardent proponent of integration, four out of five people polled said they opposed replacing the Deutsche mark with a common Eurocurrency.
Why would Denmark deliberately isolate itself from a process that has helped it become one of the strongest economies in the world? After all, the country had twice before voted yes on European issues. The business community and all major parties– Conservatives, Liberals and Social Democrats-were in favor of Maastricht. Parliament had ratified the treaty by a 13025 landslide. But, as it turned out, they were badly out of touch with their constituents: at the crucial moment, a slim majority feared that greater European integration would compromise a long and proud history of strong, decentralized democracy, in which politicians are directly accountable to voters. Late last week Denmark’s partners made it clear that they were not about to open the Maastricht Treaty to renegotiation to meet Copenhagen’s wishes. They did say that they would “keep the door open to Denmark.” But so deep was the gap between Denmark and the other Europeans that the best they could do was put off further discussions until late next fall. “No one has any idea how to deal with this issue,” Danish Prime Minister Poul Schluter told NEWSWEEK. “We need time, a lot of time, to find a solution that is good for Denmark and good for the EC.”
At stake in this apparently parochial squabble is Europe’s future and, to some extent, the world’s. In the middle of the 19th century, European powers dominated the planet economically, militarily and intellectually. But in three murderous wars between France and Germany and their respective allies, Europe “squandered its treasure,” as Lord Jenkins, a former president of the European Commission, puts it. Jenkins, like Delors and other advocates of a federal Europe, believes the only way to keep the peace and regain Europe’s past glory is to bring Europeans together in an “ever-closer union,” working steadily to create a true federation along the lines of the United States. Having led the Europeans, at last, to build a single internal market, Delors is now seeking to endow the EC with some of the political, administrative and military trappings of a single state.
Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, always dismissed that kind of goal as fuzzy-thinking claptrap. She and other Euro-skeptics hold that the nation-state based on a homogenous population with its own language and culture–was what made Europe great in the past and will ensure greatness in the future. Most antifederalists now concede that there is an advantage in forging close economic links among Europe’s independent nations. But they argue that efforts to combine them under something like a single government are bound to fail and should be actively discouraged. Many European leaders, like German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, try to steer between the federalist and Thatcherian extremes.
But history is forcing the question. The end of the cold war and the rapid withdrawal of most U.S. troops in Europe raise the issue of whether NATO can, or should, remain the center of European defense efforts. Europe’s neutral nations, as well as the ex-Soviet Union’s former satellites, are all demanding admission to the EC, thereby raising the prospect that the Community could be diluted into a loose grouping of economically and culturally disparate states. It will matter vitally to the United States and the rest of the world whether Europe really does move toward the kind of unity that would make it the “second superpower,” or whether it remains a cluster of rich but divided democracies, dependent largely on the United States for political and military leadership. Last week Danish voters opted for the second alternative. And so, in the end, may Europeans as a whole.
