Europe Comes of Age.

Moravcsik is professor of government and director of the European Union program at Harvard University.

Alas, to be born into the world without friends. That seems to be the fate of the draft constitution of the new European Union, to be presented at the summit in Thessaloniki on Friday. To a contemptuous Romano Prodi, the head of the European Commission who dreamed of building a stronger "federal" union, the document "lacks vision and ambition." By contrast, British Tories and tabloids are positively twitching with Europhobia. The proposed constitution will "sweep away 1,000 years of history," proclaims the Sun.

Don't be fooled. Prodi and his federalists are right. The Convention on the Future of Europe has deliberated--and delivered a mouse. When they began their work 18 months ago, Prodi and other Euro-insiders were convinced that they would dominate. They intended to exploit the bold rhetoric of constitutionalism to craft an idealistic document that centralized ever more power and democratic control in Brussels. There was heady talk of a new name, "United Europe." There were proposals for introducing majority voting on sensitive issues of foreign and defense policy. Brussels's influence would be extended over national fiscal and social policies. National vetoes would be eliminated. A new EU president would be directly elected, by and for the people. Farewell, faceless Eurocracy. Welcome, democracy.

Little of this has come to pass. The convention's canny chieftain, former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, knows where real power in the EU lies. Any radical draft would be picked apart by national governments when they begin reviewing the document this autumn. To encourage them to accept his draft intact, Giscard faced down the federalists and struck backroom deals with the member states. Case in point: last week's wrangling over whether to allow EU foreign policy to be ...