Europe’s Fight Over Maastricht: ‘Anti-Federalist Party’ Wins the Day : Unity: In the disputes over whether to have a strong legislature or a strong executive, something is being lost. It could be Maastricht ensures neither.

“To be or not to be,” mused Denmark’s famously indecisive Prince Hamlet. Hundreds of years later, his countrymen still can’t make up their minds. Voters in Denmark approved a watered-down version of the Maastricht agreement on European unity, but the jubilation in Danish political circles was short-lived as violent anti-Maastricht rioters turned central Copenhagen into a battlefield the night of the vote. Maastricht also made headlines in Britain as a sullen House of Commons grudgingly ratified the agreement. But the rioters in Denmark dominated the news.

Denmark is perhaps the most peaceful country in Europe. During the Cold War, a Danish political party proposed replacing the Danish Army with a continuous tape loop broadcasting “We surrender” in Russian. That the phlegmatic Danes should be ripping up paving stones, attacking police and turning Copenhagen into a scene from Dante’s “Inferno” shows just how high passions are running as Europeans try to answer the contemporary version of Hamlet’s question: Whether the 12 Common Market states are to be or not to be a European Union.

At first glance, the debate among the 12 European states over Maastricht looks a little like the debate among the 13 American states over the Constitution. The Europeans, like the Founding Fathers, are split into three camps. France leads the party of European Hamiltonians, advocating a powerful, not very democratic executive; a strong central bank; a weak legislature, and a protectionist policy aimed at building up strong domestic industries.

Germany heads up the Jeffersonian Party. Germans want a stronger, democratically elected legislative branch; they want better protection for “states’ rights” with a weaker central government; they prefer free trade to protection and are skeptical about the idea of a European central bank.

The British head up the third, Anti-Federalist Party. The Europe they want looks more like a large, loose, free-trade area than it resembles a new supranational government.

In the United States, the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians got together and worked out the compromise we know as the Constitution; together, these two parties were able--only just--to force the Constitution over the opposition of the Anti-Federalists.

In Europe, something different has happened. The Jeffersonian Germans and the Hamiltonian French never got their act together. Instead, Europe’s Anti-Federalists have consistently held the balance, combining with the French to weaken Germany’s plans for a powerful legislature and cooperating with the Germans to undermine the executive bureaucracy in Brussels. The result--vividly demonstrated by Europe’s failure to act in the Balkans--is that neither the European Parliament nor the European Commission has the authority to lead Europe.

This dog won’t hunt. Without a powerful European Parliament and a democratically accountable executive, the European Union will continue to disappoint those who expect it to play a major role in world affairs.

The plot thickens. The American Founding Fathers wrote into their Constitution a set of institutions and a political process that had the legitimacy and the strength to cope with tough questions. The Europeans, who lack these institutions and can’t agree on how to build them, have constructed a document worthy of the Melancholy Dane: Maastricht can’t make up its mind whether it is a treaty, a constitution or a legislative program. Its centerpiece--the program for European monetary union and a Central Bank--is a political program dressed up as constitutional law.

It is not surprising that this is controversial. Alexander Hamilton’s proposal for a monetary union among the 13 states and the creation of a federal Central Bank was easily the most controversial piece of legislation of its era. Mixing policy with constitution-making is asking for trouble: It makes for bad policy and an ugly ratification fight. Bad policy, because the interests of the different European countries and the differing interests within each country had little chance to affect the Maastricht negotiations.

The result is a plan for European monetary union that condemns the entire Continent to a decade of slow growth--if not outright recession. European countries such as Italy and Spain have unemployment rates in double digits; the treaty will require them to cut budget deficits and keep interest rates high. A responsible democratic government would never design a system this inflexible under the current conditions in Europe.

Unfortunately, the Maastricht goals, written into the treaty, cannot be easily changed, but rejection of Maastricht amounts to a failure to ratify the European constitution and would be a serious political blow to the European Dream.

Meanwhile, economic dissatisfaction is eroding the popularity of every government in Europe and whipping up popular opposition to Maastricht. A majority of German and British voters want referendums, and polls show the treaty being defeated in both countries.

What will probably happen is this: The 12 European states will ratify Maastricht, and then work feverishly to change it into something usable. Informed opinion in most European countries already considers the plans for European monetary union unworkable--the question is how to devise a graceful retreat. But whatever comes, the Anti-Federalists have won. Neither the German vision of a supranational European Parliament nor the French vision of a powerful international bureaucracy will be realized.

Why? Growth. The rapid expansion of the European Community will paralyze the community’s weak institutions and make it even harder for the its members to design institutions for a powerful union. Austria, Norway, Sweden and Finland are already knocking at the door; Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic hope to join before the end of the decade. Behind them stand a host of hopeful applicants, among them: Croatia, Ukraine and Turkey. They won’t all get in, but some will, and Europe’s constitutional gridlock will worsen. The result is likely to be a Europe of the lowest common denominator--the kind of loose trading system the British have always wanted.

The United States has been basically sympathetic to the European Union--despite the talk emanating from French Euro-enthusiasts that the purpose of the European Union would be to replace the United States as the leading global power in the 21st Century. Two terrible world wars, both caused by hatreds all-too visible in the Balkans today, taught the United States that peace in Europe is necessary for its own peace and security.

That U.S. policy was right. A strong, democratic, prosperous and self-confident Europe would be a useful, although a sometimes annoying, partner in the world--and the richer Europe gets the more U.S. goods it can buy. Now the United States, like the Europeans themselves, must begin to scale down its expectations for European unity and try to make the best of what remains.

While continuing to deal with the European Community on trade and other matters, the United States must work to build its relations with the individual European states. They are going to be around for a while, and their different interests will continue to complicate U.S. foreign policy for many years to come.