As usual in the 12-nation EC, the map emerged only after a marathon round of arduous and sometimes bitter haggling. The plan is full of ambiguities, technicalities and exceptions. And it is disfigured by exemptions for Great Britain in two key areas. But the Treaty of Maastricht (named after the provincial Dutch town that hosted last week’s summit) is nonetheless a turning point for Europe. It practically ensures that a common European currency will go into circulation before the end of the century. It creates a European police force, dubbed Europol. It sketches plans for a future European army. It endows the EC with new responsibilities in a dozen areas, from culture to telecommunications and consumer protection.
It was high time. Battered by stiff competition from Japan and the United States, the EC is on the verge of creating a single internal market for its 340 million citizens, to go into effect at the end of next year. But it was the cataclysmic changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union that finally pushed the Europeans to get their political act together. Those changes left Western Europe the dominant economic power on the Eurasian continent, but without the diplomatic or military strength to cope with the new situation to the east.
Maastricht will not turn Western Europe into a superpower overnight. Nor does it meet the aspirations of European federalists like Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, who had hoped to see the 12 countries transfer far more power to the Community. But it will accelerate the movement of the EC’s culturally diverse and multilingual members toward what the treaty calls “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.” By the year 2000 some, if not all, Western Europeans will be paying their bills with a single Eurocurrency, the ECU. The EC institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg will be making their influence felt in what Douglas Hurd, the British foreign secretary, calls “the nooks and crannies of private life.”
John Major, the British prime minister, came to Maastricht determined to limit the scope of Community meddling in the affairs of private citizens and sovereign nations. In part, he was motivated by the conviction that local matters are best handled locally, rather than by a remote central authority. More urgently, he needed to prove to the rabidly anti-European right wing of his Conservative Party that he was “looking after British interests.”
In the end, Britain’s European partners were so eager to get Britain’s signature that they accepted most of Major’s demands, including dropping a reference in the treaty to Europe’s “federal goal.” (London’s popular press delightedly dubbed “federalism” the “F word.”) But two issues could not be compromised away. Britain’s partners committed themselves “irreversibly” to the establishment of a common currency by 1999 at the latest. Major demanded, and got, an optout clause, allowing the British Parliament to reject the ECU later, if it wishes. A similar opt-out arrangement was cobbled together to exempt Britain from a plan to extend European legislation on labor issues.
The squabble over what most Europeans call the “social dimension” of the new union grabbed the headlines. But the rhetoric tended to obscure the achievements at Maastricht. Every country, including Britain, surrendered substantial chunks of national sovereignty. And they promised to move expeditiously to admit new members to their fold-first such wealthy neutral nations as Sweden and Austria, then the new democracies of Central Europe already clamoring for admission.
Thanks in large part to Major and Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, any new military force formed by the Europeans will act as the “European pillar” of NATO. In other words, America and Canada will retain their key roles as partners in the defense of Europe, at the same time as the Europeans increase responsibility for their own security. Indeed, the Maastricht accord goes a considerable way toward meeting the traditional American call for a more robust and politically united Western Europe. Given the increasingly unstable and unpredictable state of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Washington needs all the effective political support it can get from its traditional allies. “Maastricht,” says a senior U.S. official, “is one of those very rare things these days-a virtually unmixed blessing.”
The creation of an organic Europe is still decades away. Differences in culture, language and national temperament will hinder progress and may still derail the process. But the agreement that emerged last week dramatically increases the possibility that a real United States of Europe will one day exist. It may not be so very long before the dreaded F word can be spoken in polite society, even in Britain.
