PREVIEW / DUBLIN SUMMIT : European Unity--a Dream Fast Approaching Reality

When leaders of the 12-nation European Community gather Saturday in Dublin, Ireland, they confront the dream of the community’s founding visionary, Jean Monnet.

Americans may see the EC as an amorphous bureaucracy buried in steel quotas and cereal prices, but Monnet always saw these mundane tasks as building blocks toward a loftier goal: a European economic and political unity that would bind Germany and its neighbors so closely that war in Europe would be unthinkable.

The whirlwind of events in Eastern Europe has suddenly brought that goal within grasp.

The extraordinary meeting is expected to formally approve the terms of German reunification and commit the community to establish an intergovernmental conference to build a framework for political union.

Significance

Agreement would help bind a united Germany to full membership in a tightly integrated community of free democratic nations, thus sharply diminishing the chance that a powerful, unfettered Germany, obsessed with its own interests, might re-emerge in Europe.

It was precisely this dream that launched the EC three decades ago.

An agreement today would also give an enormous boost to the European Community, whose own plan to knit its 12 West European member-states into a single, borderless economic space by 1992, was stopped in its tracks by the dramas of Eastern Europe.

The de facto acceptance of East Germany within a united Germany stands as an important signal that there is room for the former Soviet Bloc countries in an organization that many expect to shape the Continent’s future.

Issues

An easing of concerns among EC members in recent weeks about Germany has improved the atmosphere for Saturday’s meeting.

At a preparatory meeting for the summit last weekend, support for German unity seemed universal.

What the Germans Want

Above all, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl wants the formal endorsement of his country’s allies and trading partners for unification.

He knows such international support is vital to legitimize the unity process and ensure unification can succeed without the re-emergence of the dangerous adversarial relationships of the past.

What Europeans Want

Member states want Bonn to consult closely with the EC Executive Commission on the details of unification and their impact.

What the Soviets Want

Moscow, worried about the potential of a unified Germany, wants to slow a unification process it cannot stop.

The silver lining in this otherwise dark cloud, however, is the transfer of world-class technology to East Germany, a principal trading partner.

The U.S. View

As a firm backer of German unity and a heightened EC political profile, Washington can only applaud a successful EC summit.