THE PULSE OF EUROPE : The Idea of Europe : It’s Not Just a Place--It’s a Set of Values : * As the walls tumble and the economies merge, Westerners are redefining the Continent’s concept.

Somehow, the collapse of the Berlin Wall brought hope and warmth into the bleak life of Anna Marie Murray, a 31-year-old unemployed and divorced mother in the Gorbals, the depressed and listless neighborhood that has long symbolized the blight of poverty in Glasgow.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was just sitting in, watching TV that night, tears were running down my face. I couldn’t believe the happiness on peoples’ faces. . . .

“There is always hope. I’m not a pessimist, although you may think so. I am an optimist, and I see something like that Wall coming down, and I think there is hope, people can talk and get it together. It gives me a good feeling inside.”

The joy over the cascading Wall symbolized a community of feelings in Europe. The “idea of Europe”--an attitude that Europe represents not just a geographic continent but a set of values and beliefs--has taken hold, at least in the West.

In fact, the symbol of the Berlin Wall may generate the greatest enthusiasm for those most distant from the scene. In November, 1990, on the first anniversary of the collapse of the Wall, Nuria Tey, an editor with a Barcelona publishing house, was attending the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. She and other Spanish Catalans decided to help celebrate the anniversary.

“We were all excited and went in front of the Frankfurt City Hall,” she recalled recently. “But then we were so disappointed. The Germans really have a different temperament than we Spaniards. There were very few people there. The place was desolate. We, the Catalans, were enthusiastic, but the Germans. . . .”

Both the strength and weaknesses of the “idea of Europe” were underscored by two findings of the Times Mirror survey:

* West Europeans are enthusiastic about integrating their economies more closely by the end of next year, even when they do not expect to benefit much from it.

* East Europeans may hanker after the riches promised by a united Europe, but they are still too beset with ethnic and racial rivalries to make themselves feel very European.

By the end of 1992, West Europeans are to be part of an integrated common market with as few trading barriers between countries as now exist between states of the United States--a phenomenon that most refer to, simply, as “Europe ’92.”

The fact that West Europeans overwhelmingly endorse the idea, even as they express concern about how their individual economies will fare, makes clear that there is some concept of Europe that is more important than the reality of the economics. As Claudio Dematte, professor of international finance markets at Bocconi University in Milan, put it: “To be European is a value.”

In Italy, political analysts believe that enthusiasm for Europe ’92 stems from a widespread belief--encouraged by politicians--that an integrated common market will impose “a European discipline” on an Italian society that sorely lacks one. The need for the discipline, according to the analysts, is more important for many Italians than their concerns about the economy.

Spain is another example of a country where enthusiasm for the common market is greater than the expectations. Spanish sociologist Amando de Miguel, in fact, describes the Spanish attitude toward Europe ’92 as “an irresponsible optimism.”

So long outside the mainstream of Europe--their dictator, Francisco Franco, was a pariah for most of the four decades until his death in 1975--the Spaniards have taken to Europe, in Miguel’s view, “with the enthusiasm and faith of the convert.”

None of the enthusiasm surprises Angel Vinas, the Spanish historian. “Spain has been trying to become a part of Europe since the 17th Century or, at least, the last two hundred years,” he said during an interview in Brussels.

Perhaps the nature of this enthusiasm--based more on history than reality--is what rankles the small minority in Spain that opposes the new unified market. “It is going to be a disaster,” said Maite de Guindos Latorre, a 30-year-old Madrid lawyer. “Spain is different, distinct and we are not prepared for anything.”

She described Spain as a country with a low cultural level, a country of “paella, torero and ole. “ And she saw little in common with the rest of Europe in a country that opens its bars at 6 a.m. and eats dinner after midnight. “Here in Spain life goes on at night, and we walk around like zombies during the day,” she said.

Guindos’ comments reflected her conviction that Spain is still not a part of the culture of Europe. But with that view she also, indirectly, dealt with Europe as a value. It is a value that makes most Spaniards enthusiastic about coming closer to Europe; it made Guindos pessimistic--but she still shared the idea that taking part in Europe is a cultural issue, not an economic one.

Although a majority in Britain back Europe ‘92, it also has the largest percentage that regard it as a bad idea. This evidently reflects the insular nature of Britain and reservations about European integration voiced by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher, while denouncing projects such as a common European currency, has been using a powerful emotional argument as well: She insists that the so-called “mother of Parliaments” in London could be diminished by European unity.

But Thatcher is not persuasive to all British ears. In the Labor Party stronghold of Glasgow, Anna Marie Murray described the No. 1 problem of Britain as “getting rid of Thatcherism and the Tories forever.” She summarized her feelings about an integrated market in a simple sentence: “If the Tories don’t want it, then I want it.”

The political euphoria over Europe ’92 could still be undermined by the reality of economics. Many farmers believe that their troubles have already begun.

In Normandy, Georges Lefevre, a 47-year-old farmer, does not hide his anger over an “aberrant and dizzying drop in prices” that he blames on European integration. Sitting in the living room of his old farmhouse in Gefosse-Fontenay near Isigny-sur-mer, Lefevre said that French farmers have become “tributaries of Europe from the point of view of price, and we have been taken to the cleaners.”

The Normandy farmer accused British and East European farmers of dumping their meat on the French market at ridiculous prices. The East European meat, he said, is coming across the frontier illegally.

“We are importing meat from East Europe and especially from East Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” he said, “and we now have meat at half price on the French market.”

Many Europeans believe that Germany, the strongest economy, will dominate the integrated market. That is not surprising. What is surprising is that just as many--and, in some countries, even more--believe that all countries will have about equal influence in Europe ’92.

For the most part, West Europeans show very little resentment toward Germany even when they predict probable German dominance. They tend to belittle their own national qualities in comparison with those of Germany. Germans work hard and therefore deserve their strong economy, in their the feeling.

“We’re a lazy nation,” said 35-year-old Annemaria Boomer, who runs the Swag & Tails wine bar in London’s Knightsbridge neighborhood. “In Germany they work really hard, and the standards are really high. Britain’s not exactly known for really high standards. . . . I hate to say it, but I think we will (have trouble competing). British people don’t like to work.”

But resentment against Germany does flare up. Isabela Conesa, the wife of the owner of an auto sales and repair shop in a suburb of Madrid, expressed her feelings about Germans quietly.

“The Germans work very hard,” she said. “I admire them. But deep down, I am afraid of them. If they want to dominate, all right, so long as they leave us alone. But I don’t want them to try to make us tall and blond.”

West European attitudes toward Eastern Europe do not seem clear cut as yet. The poll disclosed substantial support for the entry of East Europeans into the European Community. But no time frame was mentioned, and those polled could have been contemplating entry in the very distant future. Germany, already feeling the pain of absorbing East Germany, is most ambivalent about considering other East European countries for entry.

Martin Haushofer, a 55-year-old conservative member of the Bavarian state legislature, contended that the countries of East and West are “like day and night.” Also, he said, “if you take Czechoslovakia (into the European Community), how do you not take in Hungary? They will all want to come in.”

In Britain, where Thatcher has been whipping up fears of a loss of national identity, S. A. Murray, a 35-year-old officer in a London bank, thought that these concerns would have little impact on the young. He himself did not feel worried.

“There is obviously something which is going to be lost,” he said. Quoting a phrase from a patriotic verse by Rupert Brooke, he went on: “ ‘That is forever England,’ as the saying goes, may no longer be ‘That is forever England.’ But I think it is the 1990s now and not the 1890s, when that was probably a bit more important. I think the younger generation, particularly my own kids, who are 9 and 6 at the moment, see themselves principally as Europeans.”

In Eastern Europe, however, the feeling of a European identity is difficult when many peoples covet each other’s territory. In Western Europe, there is little of this. Only Spain feels a territorial grievance: Spaniards want Britain to return Gibraltar.

In the East, most Poles and Hungarians believe parts of neighboring countries really belong to them. Chunks of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia with huge Hungarian majorities would surely seek a new home if these two countries disintegrated. Hungary claims Romanian Transylvania. Bulgarians eye parts of Macedonia, Romania and European Turkey. Many Czechs and Moravians want Polish Silesia. More than 150,000 Ruthenians in the Ukraine have petitioned to rejoin Czechoslovakia.

It is hard to imagine the people of the former Soviet Union looking on themselves as European when they are suddenly rediscovering their 120 ethnic identities. People who were forced to identify as Soviet citizens are now Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Armenians, Georgians and so on. They dance in the streets, wave flags and talk of their own currencies and armies. It is not the time to expect them to think European.

Two years ago, during the revolutions that swept them out of the Soviet orbit, it was often said by people in the former East Bloc countries that they now wanted to “join Europe.” But today, they don’t often identify themselves that way--more than half of Bulgarians and a plurality of Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles say they never think of themselves as European.

Still, many East Europeans have been looking toward Western Europe as their economic salvation. They have hoped to be welcomed by the European Community with open arms, but instead they have so far received what looks more like a stiff arm--vague promises of formal association for Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary at the turn of the century.

East Europeans realize that they must break out of their insularity if they are ever to prosper.

“Perhaps Poland’s road to Europe leads through the east,” said a rumpled, middle-aged writer in Bialystok. “History convinced me that we are dependent on the Russian market, on the eastern market. The tragedy is that it will be 10 years before there will be someone over there to negotiate with. Our only option is to become imperialists in the East, to put it jokingly.”

WHO MAKES THE MOST PROMISING CAPITALIST?

Those who say they “strongly approve of change to a free-market economy” by gender and age Bulgaria: By gender: Male: 28% Female: 18% By age: Under 40: 34%

40-59: 20% 60 and older: 12%

Czechoslovakia By gender: Male: 40% Female: 30% By age: Under 40: 38% 40-59: 34% 60 and older: 29% Germany (East) By gender: Male: 42% Female: 31% By age: Under 40: 41% 40-59: 32% 60 and older: 34% Hungary By gender: Male: 27% Female: 18% By age: Under 40: 28% 40-59: 19% 60 and older: 21% Lithuania By gender: Male: 32% Female: 21% By age:Under 40: 36% 40-59: 20% 60 and older: 13% Poland: By gender: Male: 31% Female: 20% By age: Under 40: 30% 40-59: 23% 60 and older: 19% Russia: By gender: Male: 22% Female: 10% By age: Under 40: 21% 40-59: 14% 60 and older: 6% Ukraine: By gender: Male: 20% Female: 6% By age: Under 40: 16% 40-59: 10% 60 and older: 5%

MORE OPTIMISM IN EAST THAN WEST

From both sides: When will eastern Germans achieve the same standard of living as western Germans?

Opinions of East Germans:

Around 5 years: 39%

Around 10 years: 49%

Other: 12%

Opinions of West Germans:

Around 5 years: 34%

Around 10 years: 43%

Other: 23%