Kick the Can, Please!(European constitution)

Eurocrats are pointing fingers at Spain and Poland for sinking the Brussels summit. They might just as well have directed them at Germany. Superficially, the acrimony involved voting rights and whether to stick to the deal reached at Nice three years ago. In fact, the flap was more about money and public opinion.

First the money. The debate over voting rights does not take place in a vacuum. With the extra votes guaranteed by Nice, Spain and Poland could block more EU legislation, then demand greater payments under the EU's structural and regional programs in exchange for lifting their vetoes. Perhaps there is some social justice in this. But Germany, traditionally the "paymaster" of Europe, naturally opposes such shenanigans--and no longer suffers any cold-war shyness about saying so.

The new voting system would come into being only in 2009, though. So why all the heat now? The answer is public opinion--and the manipulative myopia it inspires in politicians. European leaders agree on 95 percent of the new constitution; they have bolstered their bargaining clout on the remaining 5 percent by issuing inflammatory and uncompromising public statements. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski calls German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder "closed" minded, though he himself is locked in his bargaining position by a 395-14 vote in the Polish Parliament. Germany enlisted France to join in a walkout if Poland and Spain did not back down. With public and parliamentary opinion so aroused, a compromise was impossible.

Commentators and statesmen alike called it a crisis that could split the EU. It won't. Instead, this is a good time for everyone involved to take a deep breath, slow down--and recall a bit of history. Europe is in difficult straits today precisely because since 1991 it has struck a series of last-minute idealistic deals--most of them Germany's doing. Here's a short list:

Double Unification. A decade ago Helmut Kohl precipitously pushed two forms of unification--a single Germany and a single currency, the euro. The two were economically contradictory, and now budgetary rules designed by Germany to constrain profligate Italians (the so-called Stability Pact) are being violated by the country that created them. The result: Germany ...