Euroskeptics vs. Europhiles

...Not only did armed conflict among the Western European nations become unimaginable for the first time...

...Much the same can be said about the peoples of Western Europe as they contemplate the shortcomings of supranational political and economic integration, toward which their governments have been conducting them step by step...

...Britons who are disdainful of Prime Minister John Major, Germans who have tired of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, French citizens who have soured on Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, and Italians who have rebelled against all of their formerly established political parties are not about to put their trust in the army of overpaid, untaxed supranational bureaucrats at the EU headquarters in Brussels who, with increasingly minimal effect, keep pumping out mountains of instructions and regulations...

...Several member states complain that Greece and Italy are guilty of "Euroan-archy"—that is, of not adequately policing domestic observance of EU regulations governing such things as environmental protection and restrictions on special product subsidies, despite their claims to the contrary...

...Indeed, attempts to achieve some of these objectives are likely to be made at the intergovernmental EU conference in 1996, when fundamental constitutional issues are to be considered...

...How then, some ask, can it be expected to cope with the problems for Europe that seem certain to develop in what has been provocatively called "Weimar Russia" by Anne McElvoy, until recently the Moscow correspondent of the London Times...

...As the drive to greater political and economic integration accelerates, however, the enthusiasm it once evoked is clearly declining...

...While the slump in the United States appears to be slipping into history, European economies are still struggling to climb out of the doldrums...

...Europhiles who had expected that there would be no place for disharmony among the member nations of a brave new Europe also have been disappointed...

...While Americans, for example, stand queued up for an hour waiting to pass through customs at London's Heathrow Airport, Italians and Spaniards walk through on the nod...

...In view of what has been achieved, turning back is out of the question...

...Most notably, it has not delivered a brighter economic future...

...But at the moment apathy toward the European enterprise, strongly colored by mistrust, is spreading throughout the community...

...None of the above is to suggest that there is any danger of the EU falling apart...

...Europhiles continue to forecast the development in the not too distant future of common foreign and defense policies, economic and monetary union, and full common citizenship for nationals of all the member countries...

...The French, though, are worried that expansion of the organization will virtually eliminate what little leadership role they have clung to since German reunification changed the face of Europe five years ago...

...Its unquestionable accomplishments notwithstanding, European integration has of late glaringly failed to live up to its promise...

...The British regularly take advantage of the elimination of customs restrictions within the EU to cross the English Channel to haul back carloads of beer and wine from France, where alcoholic beverages are considerably cheaper...

...Then there is the case of the former Yugoslavia...

...Whatever justification may be mustered for blaming the events in Bosnia on the United States, nato or the United Nations, the European Union has shown itself incapable of dealing with the horrors perpetrated on its own doorstep...

...Actual conflict is mercifully unthinkable, yet national suspicions are rampant...

...The accession of the four countries is scheduled for the end of the year, after they hold referendums in the autumn, but opinion polls indicate that popular approval cannot be taken for granted in any of them...

...A Dane who becomes ill during a visit to France can call upon the health services for treatment free of charge...

...In France, meanwhile, millionaire French-British financier Sir James Goldsmith has launched a widely supported Autre Europe campaign (with a reported 50,000 activist volunteers) to elect European Parliament candidates running on a platform of less, rather than more, unification...

...The EU is not held directly responsible for this state of affairs, but neither is it viewed as contributing meaningfully to resolving prevailing difficulties, as had been hoped...

...Britain feels the same way, and envisions the sensible Northerners helping to defuse the whims and transgressions of the comparatively frivolous Southern EU states...

...This would stretch the European Union into an entity running from the Mediterranean to the Arctic, and would bring new ideas to the table...

...The Germans look to the newcomers to help offset the financial drain currently imposed by the quartet of poor members—Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland (and the Common Agricultural Policy...

...They are concerned, too, that the likely inclusion of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia in the EU before the end of the century will shift its balance even more eastward, giving Germany greater leverage than it already has...

...The EU, for instance, has done almost nothing to help member nations trying to accommodate the masses of immigrants from Eastern Europe and North Africa...

...In short, nationals of EU members have assumed significant additional legal—though not yet fully comprehensive—identities as Western Europeans...

...The reason those dissidents are gaining credibility these days is not hard to find...

...Although some critical voices were raised as the whole process gathered momentum and took shape, the catalog of basic achievements that attended common purpose and common effort among the EU nations was impressive...

...Unemployment is stuck at around the 11-12 per cent mark (twice the United States' level) in the Continent's industrial heartland, and reaches as high as 25 per cent in some parts of the 12 member nations...

...Nor has it confronted its Common Agricultural Policy, which consumes half the EU's huge budget to protect a comparatively small farming population and results in inflated food prices...

...The Norwegians, in fact, voted to stay out of the EU once before...

...Some impetus may be provided soon by the addition of four new member nations—Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Austria...

...Poorer nations of the Union and depressed areas of richer ones could draw on a massive pool of funds for economic stimulus...

...Norman Gelb reports regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...Even this year's elections for the European Parliament, to be held June 9 in Britain and June 12 in the rest of the EU, have not been able to rekindle the crusading spirit of the past...

...Europhile activists exulted in the conviction that theirs was a thriving crusade, establishing irreversible unity and brotherhood on a continent that has been repeatedly wracked by hugely destructive wars...

...The EU's achievements have also been felt by individual Europeans on a personal level...

...Britain suspects that a French-German axis is striving to diminish still further many aspects of British distinctiveness and sovereignty...

...The French fear that a unified Germany, with the biggest bloc of votes in the European Parliament, will dominate the Union...

...Former Bavarian politician and EU bureaucrat Manfred Brunner is seeking to do much the same in Germany...

...Germain, observed that the players on European teams often start their games confidently and then lose heart as soon as they meet a serious challenge on the field...

...A German resident in Greece can vote in Greek elections and even run for public office there...

...We are not on some sort of spaceship trying to decide which bit of earth we are going to visit," he warned...

...Such fears and charges only underscore the need to revive enthusiasm for integration...

...Angered by pronouncements of the Euroskeptics here, British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd recently sought to counter them by urging his countrymen to take a hard look at the map of the world...

...Major industries competed less destructively across national boundaries and could meet the economic challenges posed by the United States and Japan more effectively...

...And Professor Antonio Martino, chief economic adviser to new Italian political leader Silvio Berlusconi, is a member of the Bruges Group of European politicians and economists who have long challenged the proponents of greater European integration...

...But it remains to be seen whether the Europhiles or the Euroskeptics will prevail in shaping the future of this potential United States of Europe...

...From unhappiness with the inability of integration to ameliorate Europe's basic economic troubles it has been just a short jump to other criticisms that have raised the stock of the Euroskeptics...

...The Common Market that grew out of the post-World War II European Coal and Steel Community and was broadened into the European Community, last year was in turn transformed into the European Union (EU...