Nationalism in Western Europe Throws Up Detours on Road to Unity : Community: The EC looked to be a done deal. But now that Denmark is resisting giving up some of what makes it a nation, troubles may lie ahead.

Nationalism is rampant in Eastern Europe, and is now emerging as a potent force in Western Europe as well. Danes sent just that message last week, to both their politicians and to those in Brussels. By referendum, they narrowly defeated the landmark Maastricht treaty signed during the European Community summit in December, a treaty supported by four-fifths of the Danish Parliament. In five months, Europeans have gone from grand hopes for a European central bank, or “Eurofed,” to a mood of “Euro-fed up.”

At Maastricht, the Europeans committed themselves to brave next steps--a common currency by the end of the century, plus efforts to coordinate foreign policy and a European defense force.

Now, the signs of backlash are apparent--in Denmark and also in other countries. Officially, the EC is now back to square one. More important, the referendum was yet another sign that the path to a united Europe will be slower than Maastricht’s intrepid hopes.

A “no” vote, especially in a referendum, is cheap--virtually nothing in daily life will be immediately affected. Thus, like all referendums, the one in Denmark afforded an opportunity to express displeasure with the current state of affairs--from recession at home to irritation with “Europe.” The opportunity was all the more tempting because only Britain, the wayward “European,” had a real debate before Maastricht; now the others are being asked to decide, after the fact, on faits accomplis.

In that sense, Maastricht is a kind of fractal for attitudes toward the European Community as a whole. While a single Western Europe is, more and more, a practical fact, the community itself seems remote and technical, faceless Eurocrats, accountable to no one in particular, passing down rules in Brussels. It is what Jacques Delors, the president of the EC Commission (and thus the chief Eurocrat) calls Europe’s “democratic deficit.”

That deficit worries Europe’s national parliaments, not least the Danish, second only to the British Parliament as a watchdog of Brussels’ supranational encroachments. Ordinary citizens have realized that Maastricht ultimately might mean ceding cherished national symbols to Brussels. They grouse even in Germany, the community’s core and the pivot around which monetary union was designed. Why, Germans ask, should they trade their deutsche marks, the symbol of their postwar success, for mere European currency, “Esperanto money.”

Under the terms of the treaty itself, all 12 EC partners must ratify Maastricht or it is a dead letter, which complicates the expressed determination of Germany and France to soldier on without Denmark. No doubt, though, the two countries will argue that this setback should be met by a redoubling of “European” efforts, and so will not back away from their controversial proposal to create a Franco-Germany corps as the nucleus of a European army.

Face-saving adjustment to Maastricht, followed by a new Danish referendum would be logical, but reopening Maastricht for one nation would reopen it for all. Moreover, Ireland will hold its own referendum later this month. French President Francois Mitterrand has now committed his country to hold a referendum as well. This is, in part, clever domestic politics, since his conservative opposition is divided over the issue.

The EC’s single market will not be affected by last week’s vote. That is a done deal--though not all the legislation has been approved by national parliaments. But the entry into the EC of those “other” Western Europeans, the nations of the European Free Trade Area--Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, Iceland and Finland--will be delayed while the EC sorts itself out. Meanwhile, the membership hopes of others, especially the struggling democracies of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, will be pushed farther into the future.

The Danish vote is a reminder that national feeling, if not nationalism, is not just something for Europe’s East. In the West, it is alive and well--in part because of the community’s success: Five million Danes can afford to be Danish because the community surrounds them with an economic unit of 240 million people. For the same reason, the EC tempts Scots or Catalonians to feel they have less need for Britain or Spain and so more freedom to bring political community, if not national sovereignty, closer to home.

Economic interdependence begets political union: this was the community’s founding logic. It still holds. But last week was a reminder that the process is not swift, nor the connection between economics and politics direct. The winners of the vote were former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her co-religionists, who argue for a thinner Europe--more than a free-trade area but one that does not require members to cede basic political decisions to the center.

In the end, a monetary union and common currency will come--less, perhaps, because anyone wants Esperanto money than because private business finds multiple currencies a nuisance. With a common currency will come tight limits on national fiscal policies--and a critical attribute of political sovereignty will pass to the community.

Eventually, the EFTA nations will join the European Community. Existing community procedures, unwieldy and undemocratic for 12, would be Rube Goldberg contraptions for 18. New members will underscore the need for more sensible, but also more accountable, ways of doing EC business. If the Danish vote does not overturn the EC’s basic logic, it does indicate that political Europe will grow by fits and starts, and sometimes over the qualms of Europe’s citizens.

These hardly seem circumstances in which the United States should disengage from Europe. Quite the contrary, when Europeans cannot agree on Maastricht, much less what is to be done about Yugoslavia’s civil wars. Yugoslavia was not enough of a shock to drive Europeans back to Uncle Sam’s comforting shadow, and, no doubt, neither will last week’s vote. But Western Europe’s cohesion cannot be taken for granted. As with sanctions against Serbia, an American lead will make it easier for the EC nations to agree among themselves.