Regional Outlook : Ecu, Brute! : Germans’ support for a unified Europe is sliding. They are rejecting a common currency, the ecu, and clinging to the deutschemark, symbol of national identity.

The glow is fading from Europe’s dream.

Faced with the hard reality of the once-utopian idea of forging a de facto United States of Europe with a single currency, the citizens of the Old World are beginning to balk.

Denmark’s dramatic “no”--in a referendum last week on a treaty that would bind the 12 European Community nations into a political and economic union by the end of the century--does not mark the end of the dream. But it is symptomatic of a far harder road that lies ahead for those pushing the Continent toward greater unity.

While public attention now focuses on the next electoral test--a June 18 referendum on the treaty in Ireland--a little-noticed but potentially far more important problem for the advocates of European unity percolates quietly in the Community’s keystone nation: Germany.

For among all the doubts now surfacing throughout the European Community, nowhere have they appeared more suddenly or grown faster than among the Germans, a people who once counted a united, democratic Western Europe among their most coveted goals.

“The reservations many people have are not only a Danish phenomenon--they are also widespread in Germany,” summed up Bjoern Engholm, leader of the main opposition Social Democrats and premier of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, which borders Denmark.

In no other country are these reservations heavier with implications.

While the Danes have nurtured doubts about the European Community since their country joined it 19 years ago, West Germany was one of the Community’s six founding members, its biggest, richest state as well as one of its prime cheerleaders.

Any significant erosion of Germany’s commitment to the idea would seriously impair a further deepening of European unity, for little of substance can be done within the Community without German approval.

In the past, West Germany--eager to make amends for the Nazi destruction of Europe--repeatedly rescued the Community from crisis by either taking the extra step or paying more. Its actions were a kind of mixture of voluntary reparation and enlightened self-interest that was only possible with broad, unquestioned public support.

But today, polls show that as much as three-quarters of the German public either opposes key elements of unity or believes it is no longer affordable. And there is strong opposition to replacing the German deutschemark with a single European Community currency, known as the ecu, by 1999.

Ironically, this change of mood is unlikely to hinder Germany’s ratification of the Maastricht Treaty on economic and political union. With no referendum possible under the German constitution and all major political parties committed to backing the pact, parliamentary ratification is all but assured later this year.

However, there are signs that Germany’s political altruism and its fat wallet--both so instrumental in the drive toward European integration in the past--may be sharply diminished in the future.

“German efforts toward European union reached their peak at Maastricht,” summed up a highly respected, senior Bonn-based diplomat, referring to the Dutch city where European leaders agreed to the treaty last December.

In part, Germany’s shift is driven by the same factors that have caused doubts among other Europeans: They are only now beginning to wake up to the enormous implications of the Maastricht Treaty.

“There was never a real debate here on Europe here because it was taboo,” explained Gerd Langguth, a former member of the German Bundestag, or Parliament, and now head of the European Community’s Commission office in Bonn. “No one talked of the disadvantages. If a Christian Democrat or Social Democrat member of Parliament openly advocated withdrawal from the European Community, his political career would have been over.”

Although no serious German political figure yet advocates complete withdrawal, debate is no longer taboo. It was Bild Zeitung, the mass-circulation national daily, that triggered the first public doubts in Germany on the very eve of last December’s Maastricht summit with a series of dramatic, front-page articles. The first headline seemed to come out of nowhere, shocking readers with the words: “Our Beautiful Currency--The D-Mark Is Being Abolished.”

That edition was quickly followed by other stories aggressively attacking the plan to replace the deutschemark and other national currencies with a single European currency.

One article reported the results of a phone-in poll showing that 96.6% of those who called wanted to keep the deutschemark.

“Hands Off Our Mark!” demanded the newspaper in a half-page-deep headline, taking on the role of spokesman for the German public.

It was an undercurrent of unease never before seen in Germany. In the months since, the unease has continued to grow.

“Those stories went straight to the heart of the public mood,” commented a respected senior Bonn diplomat. “It was like putting a match in a tinderbox.”

Today, a curious alliance ranging from the popular press and right-wing political parties to respected intellectuals, senior policy-makers and a former president of the German Central Bank has coalesced to challenge European monetary union--a pivotal element of deeper unity. One senior official in Bonn admitted that opposition extends to the highest levels of the political bureaucracy.

“Officially, everyone (in the government) agrees on Maastricht,” this official said. “But unofficially, everyone has their doubts. I don’t know any director (department head) in the chancellery who really agrees with Maastricht.”

The Federal Press Office here earlier this year was forced to quietly drop an advertising campaign promoting the Maastricht Treaty when the business leaders recruited for the endorsements refused to go on the record guaranteeing the stability of a Euro-currency.

That the first real German doubts about European unity are linked to currency union is hardly surprising.

For a people who have few national symbols that are not in some way tainted by the past, the deutschemark is a rare exception.

It stands for all that Germans want to be: strong, respected, responsible, reliable and, above all, wanted.

In a very real way, the deutschemark’s strength is seen by Germans as the foundation of their post-World War II economic success, the underpinning of their democratic stability and the guarantor of their future prosperity.

“For the average German, the loss of the mark comes as a psychological shock,” said Willy de Clercq, a former EC external affairs commissioner who now represents Belgium in the European Parliament.

So far, those in the engine room of European integration in Brussels tend to play down the shift in Germany’s mood. They admit that German anxieties are growing more serious but consider them far from life-threatening.

“I don’t think it is at all fundamental,” said De Clercq. “What we’re seeing now is the crest of a wave, but even the highest wave has to come down eventually.”

Uneasiness is mounting throughout the EC, De Clercq said, as part of a “natural reaction” to the steps toward political and economic unity.

“It’s not a serious problem provided the rest of the countries handle it properly,” commented Stanley Crossick, founder of the Belmont European Policy Center, a Brussels consulting firm.

He urged the 12 nations to move ahead quickly with political union, making sure to accommodate German concerns in the process.

A series of more permanent changes is also at work in Germany that suggest the days of German generosity in the pursuit of European idealism may be numbered.

Among these changes:

* The reunification in 1990 that restored Germany’s nationhood and its full sovereignty has also forced an identity crisis among both eastern and western Germans. While that redefinition continues, the belief in European unity, once so vital to western Germans, is likely to diminish.

* The sudden new pressures to finance the reconstruction of eastern Germany and Eastern Europe, to accommodate a large influx of refugees and asylum seekers and to bridge the social and economic gap with eastern neighbors have all sharply reduced German willingness to pay more for European unity.

* “The Germans feel a bit insecure right now,” said Langguth. “They don’t want to hand over money to eastern Germans, let alone to other Europeans.”

* The historic necessity of European unity as the best way to avoid war--a belief so deeply ingrained in post-World War II German leaders that at times the ideal took on the earmarks of a crusade--is falling victim to generational change. Increasingly, younger Germans view European unity more in financial than in political terms.

A poll conducted last week by the Wickert Institute found that while nearly 60% of those questioned who are over the age of 30 believe Germany could not at present afford the costs of European integration, the figure among 18- to 30-year-olds is nearly 90%.

Some analysts here believe these developments mean a permanent weakening of the European idea in Germany.

Meanwhile, Germans tend to grumble that they pay more and get less from the European Community than anyone. And they are correct, mainly because Germany was always prepared to pay more.

By providing just under a third, or $22.7 billion, of the EC’s $80-billion 1992 budget, Bonn is far and away the Community’s largest contributor.

Germany proportionately also gets a smaller return in Community benefits than any other member state--roughly $1 for just over every $2 it pays.

These two facts place Germany in the most unfavorable financial position of all the 12 member states. In the European Parliament, Germany also has proportionately fewer members than any other Community state.

So long as Germans were willing to accept these conditions as the price to pay for unifying Western Europe, there was virtually no public dissent.

Germany’s new doubts could bring pressure to change such a policy.

It is amid these realities that European Community leaders convening later this month in Lisbon are expected to discuss new budget proposals calling for spending boosts of 30% over the next five years to finance monetary and political union.

How Germans will react remains unclear, but few expect applause.

“If it becomes an issue of how much more Germany must pay, the government is going to face a real problem,” warned Horst Teltschik, former chief foreign policy adviser to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and now chief executive officer of the Bertelsmann Foundation.

The shift of German public mood against monetary union has created an unusual situation for a parliamentary democracy, in which both Kohl’s ruling coalition and the main opposition Social Democrats endorse a policy opposed by most of the population.

At present, the new German mood has no voice in the political mainstream.

Indeed, only the extreme right-wing nationalist parties such as the Republicans seem to speak for the majority of Germans on the issue--a situation that some find unsettling.

During recent borough council elections in Berlin, the Republicans campaigned, in part, under the slogan, “Help us rescue our deutschemark.”

In the wake of the Danish referendum results, the Republicans’ chairman, former Nazi SS member Franz Schoenhuber, issued a statement declaring the vote “a strike against the increasingly interfering Brussels Eur-ocracy”.

“It is regrettable that the idea of a referendum isn’t possible in Germany,” he said.

Some advocates of European unity here argue that a public relations campaign is needed to polish the Community’s image. “We have to work harder to present the advantages of European integration; otherwise it could be dangerous,” said Teltschik.

Part of the image problem in Germany is that because Germany was always known in Brussels for its willingness to give and its reluctance to push, its interests have tended to be brushed aside.

Despite the fact that more European Community citizens speak German than any other language, for example, Germans have so far been frustrated in their efforts to elevate their mother tongue onto a par with French and English as a Community working language.

Kohl’s efforts at Maastricht to boost Germany’s European Parliament representation by 18 members to take into account the addition of eastern Germany were reportedly blocked by French President Francois Mitterrand, as were German attempts to transfer more power from the executive Commission of appointees in Brussels to the elected Parliament.

It was a move that caused Rudiger von Wechmar, a German European Parliament member, to quip that if the European Community applied for membership in the EC, it would be rejected as not fulfilling requirements that it be a genuine democracy.

“Either there is a push in the direction of democratization or there will be real stagnation,” predicted Heidemarie Wieczorak-Zeul, a Bundestag member and the Social Democratic Party’s spokeswoman on European affairs.

But the senior-most German representative to the EC, European Commission Vice President Martin Bangemann, remains optimistic despite the more skeptical domestic mood.

“It’s true that in Germany, there may be a majority against giving up the deutschemark,” Bangemann said. “But that majority would not form itself into a majority to say ‘no’ to Maastricht as a whole. There’s a totality here--a qualitative leap into another stage of European unity, and that would not be rejected by the Germans.”

Times staff writer Rone Tempest, in Paris, contributed to this article.

Falling Out of Favor

The ecu is suddenly far less popular among Germans than among other Western Europeans, such as the French. COUNTRY BY COUNTRY

Fall 90 Feb 92 for against for against Italy 72% 11 62 25 Greece 64 10 60 15 France 62 19 58 36 Belgium 61 18 56 29 Netherlands 61 25 46 45 Ireland 58 17 62 25 Portugal 55 16 49 35 Spain 53 10 52 26 Germany 50 27 24 63 Luxembourg 47 26 52 29 Britain 38 43 33 58 Denmark 35 50 32 60 EC average 55 23 44 41

Both the 1990 and 1992 figures are from Eurobarometer polls, although the questions differ slightly. The 1990 poll was simply, “Are you for or against a common European currency.” The 1992 poll was more precise, asking: “According to the agreenments and the Treaty of Maastricht, the member states of the EC foresee to introduce a single common currency by 1999 at the latest: the ECU. Do you think it is a good idea to replace the (currency) in (our country) by the ECU, or do you think it is not a good idea?”

Germany and the EC

By providing just under a third, or $22.7 billion of the EC’s $80-billion 1992 budget, Bonn is far and away the community’s largest contributor.

E.C. GERMANY GERMANY % OF E.C. LAND AREA 911,817 SQ. MI 137,838 SQ. MI. 15.1% POPULATION 343.5 MILLION 79.5 MILLION 23.1% GDP $6015.5 BILLION $1157.2 BILLION 19.2% EC BUDGET 80.0 BILLION 22.7 BILLION 28.4%

SOURCES: EUROPEAN COMMUNITY; CIA WORLD FACTBOOK, 1992; WORLD ALMANAC, 1992.

PERCENT FAVORING A COMMON EUROPEAN CURRENCY

France:

Fall, 1990: 62%

Feb., 1992: 58%

Germany:

Fall, 1990: 50%

Feb., 1992: 24%