The Danes Vote for a New Europe : Yes to a far-reaching blueprint for achieving closer political and economic cooperation

By their solid approval of the Maastricht Treaty voters in Denmark have given the European Community’s thrust toward greater continental unity a nudge forward, after last year very nearly stopping that progress dead in its tracks. The next major test comes in London today, when a divided House of Commons is expected to ratify the treaty. With that, all 12 EC members will have more or less endorsed the far-reaching blueprint for achieving closer political and economic cooperation among the bloc’s 340 million people by 1999.

The Danes, fearful as the citizens of a number of other EC countries are of having their national identity submerged, approved only with reservations the treaty that was signed in the Dutch town of Maastricht 18 months ago. For one thing Denmark reserves the right to stay out of the monetary union and not to participate in common defense policies. Britain has similarly opted out of the common currency plan. Denmark has also rejected the concept of common European citizenship and a common immigration policy.

The effort to reinvigorate the movement toward Western European integration comes at a difficult time. Many EC nations are stuck in deep economic recession. Unemployment rates are high, popular frustrations are rising. Jacques Delors, the EC’s chief executive, confidently announced that the Danish vote would provide “a stimulus to the community to leave behind a period of gloom and inaction.” At the bureaucratic level, perhaps. But energizing the economies and mobilizing the political wills of a dozen different states will require far more than a successful referendum in Denmark.

The EC’s goal of achieving a common foreign policy remains elusive; witness the community’s problems in reaching a clear consensus over how to deal with the butchery in Bosnia. Complications seem certain to increase, rather than be resolved, as membership in the bloc expand.

In the next few years Austria, Finland, Norway and Sweden are likely to join the EC. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland are eager to be added to the ranks by the end of the decade. Each new member will bring its own historical baggage and special interests and problems to the negotiating table.

Whatever difficulties lie ahead--and the road could prove bumpy indeed--Europe nonetheless seems to be steadily moving toward forming an ever larger internal market and a steadily more powerful and efficient economic bloc. Americans have to be alert to the implications and consequences of this trend. It’s going to be an increasingly tougher economic world out there, one in which global U.S. competitiveness is likely to be challenged as never before.