COLUMN RIGHT : Thatcher’s Fall Won’t Bring Dream Closer : Europe will fragment, not unite, and will be better for it.

Now that Margaret Thatcher has been eased out, we are repeatedly told, progress toward a united Europe will be easier. The former British prime minister supposedly had a “mystical,” if irrational, attachment to the pound sterling, to all things British and to the idea of sovereignty in general. Now that she is gone, such anachronisms will no longer obstruct the path to the sunny uplands of European integration and harmony.

Don’t bet on it. In fact, it’s a good bet that a European union--whether political, economic or monetary--will never take place. The world is moving in the opposite direction. As events in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and even Canada suggest, nation-states are tending to fragment into smaller units, not merge into larger ones. Political power is becoming more decentralized, not concentrated in federal capitals. The real force for European unity may already be over. As Winston Churchill pointed out 40 years ago, it was the Soviet threat that united Europe, as nothing else ever had. Now that threat is gone.

True, the issue of Britain’s role in Europe was a key factor in Thatcher’s downfall. A month ago, after one more European Community meeting (in Rome) she accused its leaders of living in “cuckoo land.” Her deputy prime minister, Sir Geoffrey Howe, thereupon resigned, saying that she saw Europe as “positively teeming with ill-intentioned people.” This hurt Thatcher. But neither her departure nor the choice of John Major as her successor will bring the Eurocrats’ dream of a united, depoliticized continent any closer.

In fact, the very meeting in Rome which led to her downfall illustrated the persistence of national politics within the institutions that are supposed to transcend nationalism. The presidency of the EC rotates among members, and it was the Italians’ turn. Thatcher had suggested, tactlessly, that they were incompetent. Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti responded by changing the meeting’s agenda to embarrass Thatcher.

At the meeting in Rome, the EC was supposed to do something about the excessive European farm subsidies. (It’s estimated that British families pay, on average, $33 a week in extra food bills and taxes to subsidize Europe’s farmers--mostly French and German.) Huge “food mountains” continue to grow. But European leaders would rather talk than take politically unpopular action. So it was decided that by 1994 the second phase of economic and monetary union would commence. Nothing was done about the agriculture subsidies. With the current round of world trade talks just ending, it is beginning to look as if the EC, which was originally intended to facilitate free trade, may end up obstructing it.

A single European currency is not on the most optimistic schedule before 1997. It will mean giving up national control of monetary policy and (to a great extent) fiscal policy as well. Most voters don’t really know what’s at stake because the subject is so complicated. When the pollsters call, however, dutiful citizens usually give the “correct” answers, as suggested by the wording of the questions. An illusory consensus is thereby built up. Later, when these people find out that they are no longer allowed to ride in their familiar buses or eat their preferred sausages (real EC proposals) and that lawmakers have even surrendered power to cut taxes, they will rise up in anger. But by then, their current leaders will no doubt be in comfortable retirement.

Then again, some of the less prosperous countries--Greece, Portugal and Spain--have been showing enthusiasm for the European cause because they believe they will be able to extract subsidies from Germany. But the high cost of modernizing what was East Germany makes this unlikely.

As the Times of London pointed out, Thatcher irritated her European colleagues because she refused to treat monetary union the way they did, as “so much diplomatic Esperanto--waffle which can be agreed today and disregarded tomorrow.” The error of those who believe in a united Europe (among them many Americans, not least of whom are in the Bush Administration) is to imagine that there is some refined and lofty platform where politicians of the more statesmanlike variety can gather and make decisions affecting minute details of their subjects’ lives, without themselves feeling the winds of politics.

There is no such vantage point. Thatcher knew it and said so with admirable bluntness. Her former colleagues in the plush meeting halls of Europe probably know it, too. If not, they will soon find out. Europe will fragment, not unite, and will be the better for it.