Unity After The Euro?

If you call Jacques Delors the father of the euro, he tries to be modest. "Well, one of them," he says. But he's the man. In the 1980s, as head of the European Commission, Delors wrestled the Continent's politicians and central bankers into line for the creation of a single market with a common currency. He is a mastermind of European "convergence," the sorcerer of "spillover" from economic to political integration. So last week, when hundreds of millions of euros ceased to be accounting notions and started to jingle in European pockets, Delors should by rights have been celebrating. But no. Instead he fretted, as Americans like to say, about "the vision thing."

For Europe to build on the euro's success, said Delors, "there's got to be vision, and heart, and pragmatism," none of which he sees in great abundance on the Continental scene today. And when he does cite a leader he thinks "has those qualities," he names not a Frenchman or a German but, of all people, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "He's a man with a philosophy of life and of society and he sticks to it," Delors explains. All that Blair lacks, he suggests, is the euro itself. If Britain under Blair embraces the single currency, "it will play a leading role," says Delors, perhaps even the leading role in framing the future of Europe.

Blair may blanch when he reads these lines. There's no more sensitive national issue in Britain right now, and a ringing endorsement from the most famous French Eurocrat is not exactly what the spin doctors ordered. But Delors's notion that an Englishman could actually lead Europe suggests just how much the Continent's vision of itself is changing. Last week's introduction of the euro opens a new chapter in Europe's evolution. Questions of what Europe should be, can be and will be remain wide open--and both the political and economic leadership of what will soon be the world's biggest unified market is up for grabs.

Not so very long ago, such issues were scarcely debated east of Dover. A "United States of (Western) Europe" with France and West Germany at its core seemed a plausible vision to many on the Continent. But the reunification of Germany changed the balance and priorities of the most powerful governments. Repeated failures to forge united defense and foreign policies chastened the dreamers. Administrative reforms that would democratize the European system have faltered--and today there is almost no consensus on how the Union should govern itself, even though it's set to almost double in size by 2004.

The recent summit at Laeken in Brussels was heady with visions of a "European constitution." (Delors, 76, who now heads a Europe think tank, would have liked to preside but was shouldered aside by France's ex-president Valery Giscard d'Estaing.) Yet it's equally significant that hardly anyone talks seriously about a European superstate anymore. Even the most outspoken proponents of so-called European Federalism, such as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, speak of curbing some EU powers and (gasp) returning them to members. Others openly decry Europe's "undemocratic" and "top down" ways, among them the Danes, Irish and Italians. Everyone agrees that the time is ripe to reconsider Europe's vision of itself.

As Europeans and the rest of the world look for clues to the future, the best guide may be the present. As Delors suggests, the key to what's been achieved so far is not ideology but pragmatic results. Instead of unbending insistence on unity, he speaks of policies of "differentiation" that allow the ...