Is Europe Broken?(Valery Giscard d'Estaing to chair European Union's constitutional convention)

Valery Giscard d'Estaing set three goals for his summer vacation this month. The erudite former French president, now 76, plans to go walking in the Loire Valley. He will perfect his studies of the Chinese language, and once again he will plow through the hundreds of pages of treaties and agreements that are the foundation for the European Union. "It takes a month just to read those texts," he says, and Mandarin is sometimes easier to understand. But as chairman of the European Union's constitutional convention, he figures it's his job to pare those pyramids of paperwork down to some "30 or 35 pages in all"--something that's at once comprehensive and comprehensible, not to mention digestible, just like "the other great constitutions" of the world.

Can it be done? If not, Giscard tells NEWSWEEK, he doesn't see much future for the European Union. "Right now," he says, "the system has gone..." He stops himself. Is he about to say "gone bad"? Or maybe has reached the point of being "broken"? "Yes," he replies. "But that's too much. Let's just say... it functions with great difficulty."

That bit of diplomatic legerdemain is said with a chuckle, of course. But if Europe is not exactly broken, Giscard knows full well that it soon could be. For the past five months, ever since the convention began deliberations in Brussels, its 105 delegates from the European Union's 15 members and 13 candidate states have listened to a litany of hopes and frustrations, confusion and incomprehension. And with as many as 12 of those candidate states set to join by the end of 2004, Giscard feels more than a little urgency about the convention's work. He's called it "the last chance" for a united Europe, and he elaborates bluntly: "Look, a system that works badly with 15 can't work at all with 27." Responsibility and channels of authority are confused at every turn. The EU's decisions are often "incomprehensible to the public." So for all his politesse and delicate talk of "texts," he's likely to propose an almost complete re-think of how the Union operates.

As Giscard strolls along the bucolic Loire, Eurocrats suspect, he'll be hatching a master plan that he intends to ram through the convention over the winter. And even as he demurs, the ever-confident and oh-so- French patrician lays out some fundamentals of his (and what may well become Europe's) new vision for the coming decades.

For 50 years the driving force in Europe's grand experiment was the team of France and Germany, working as partners. Together, they pulled the rest of the Union behind them, calling the shots in tandem even though the unanimous approval of other members was supposedly required for any important decision. But those days are fading, if not gone. "The French-German engine is no longer the driving force," Giscard says matter-of-factly. As if on cue, President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroder met last week, eloquently demonstrating how far apart the old allies have grown by being unable even to discuss (let alone agree upon) how to tackle the prickly problem of European budgets and the divisive "common" agricultural policy. Yet when Paris and Berlin are not pulling in the same direction, the EU ends up with little direction at all. Unless Europe can create a new engine to propel its evolution, says Giscard, "it will be impossible for the Union to move forward."

It's not clear how that problem will be resolved. So far, Giscard's biggest challenge has been to keep the conventioneers from toppling into a fundamental divide. Right now, there are several camps, each ...