Can Europe Work? A Plan to Rescue the Union

The future of Europe has become a very complicated and technical subject, although it really ought to be very simple. We need a strong and viable European Union. Without it, the world would be back where it was at the end of the First World War. Indeed, the map of Europe today looks largely as it did in 1919, but with one big difference -- 15 countries of Western Europe are linked in the European Union.

Its creators brought a union into existence to prevent a recurrence of war, particularly one between Germany and France. For 45 years it has been successful in this mission. But the collapse of the Soviet empire and the reunification of Germany upset the delicate balance. Chancellor Helmut Kohl wanted to ground a united Germany firmly in Europe, and the French insisted on creating a stronger union to contain a larger Germany. Margaret Thatcher objected and her successor as British prime minister, John Major, exacted heavy concessions, but there was a sense of urgency, a self-imposed deadline, as leaders of the member states reached a new agreement for Europe. The Treaty on European Union was initialed in the Dutch city of Maastricht in December 1991 and signed two months later.

Maastricht established three pillars for what was now to be styled the European Union: a common currency, a common foreign and security policy, and a common justice and internal policy. Along with this, member states acknowledged that to fulfill its mission the EU must open itself to eastward expansion and admit in a timely fashion countries that qualified. That should have been the end of the story and we should be living happily ever after, with a new institution for a new world. But there is something profoundly wrong in Europe.