Regional Outlook : Fasten Your Seat Belt: Greece Gives EU a Bumpy Ride : Many Europeans view Papandreou as a troublemaker, citing the blockade of Macedonia and feuds with Albania and Turkey. Others say bias against a small, poor nation is at work.

Greece, the current president of the European Union, is being sued by the other 11 members. What’s going on in this normally cozy club? The manager has been breaking team rules, and the players are furious.

They are aghast at the Greek economic blockade of its landlocked neighbor, recognized by the United Nations and the United States as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia but proclaimed by the 2 million people of the little country as simply Macedonia.

That’s the word that is inflaming Greek passions, touching deep nationalistic chords. Greece insists it holds the copyright on the name Macedonia and all related symbols and history.

This is the biggest--but just one--of the problems Athens is having with its EU partners. The Greeks, for instance, are also noisily feuding with Albania, another Balkan neighbor. They are friendlier with land-hungry Serbia than their European allies would like, and the Greeks scarcely draw breath in their longstanding campaign of insult against Turkey, its next-door neighbor and partner in NATO.

Not much of a manager, and not much of a partner either, other members of the European rich man’s club are saying.

In many European capitals, Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, EU president for the first half of this year, is often considered more troublemaker than leader. Other EU members have made it clear that they consider Greek Angst over the newly independent country that calls itself Macedonia to be gratuitous and destabilizing in the Balkan caldron.

The Papandreou government’s truculence at being hauled by its peers before the EU’s Court of Justice in Luxembourg is symptomatic of Greece’s troubles in meshing with the rest of Europe. By nearly every statistical measure--personal income to national inflation to government deficit--Greece is the worst off of Europe’s dozen. Like its alphabet, Greece is different from the rest of Europe.

The EU’s legal action against its partner--essentially accusing Greece of a major breach of the union’s founding treaty--is unprecedented. After two months of stern warnings and a brief, futile attempt at mediation, the EU’s executive commission decided last month that legal action was the only way to end the Greek blockade of the former Yugoslav republic on its northern border.

EU treaties forbid any member country from closing its borders unless there is a threat of war--a set of circumstances the EU claims doesn’t exist in this case. But Athens disagrees.

“The Greeks are saying there’s a threat of war because they’re the ones doing the threatening,” explained a commission official familiar with the case.

In late April, the case landed at the Court of Justice, where jurists are considering whether to issue a preliminary injunction that would require Greece to lift the blockade, at least temporarily. Imposed without warning in February, the blockade is squeezing hard on the economy of the little republic. The lawsuit is scant solace to the Macedonians: A final ruling on the EU’s case could take years.

Publicly and privately, the Europeans are sulfurous at what they see as Greek disdain for international law. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd complained of blockade measures that “in our view are illegal and certainly harm the reputation and the authority of Greece.” German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel denounced the blockade as “counter to the normal behavior expected between civilized European nations.”

A Dutch official was even more pungent: “Actions like that make you wonder if they really belong here (in the EU).”

But not all opinions are so harsh about Greece, which holds the rotating presidency through the end of June.

“Greece may be a burr in Europe’s saddle, but it is an important member of democratic Europe,” commented one senior Western diplomat. “In fact, it is more European than it was even a few years ago, closer to the rest in dress, consumer goods and habits. At the same time, though, it is Byzantine--and Greek.”

Membership in the union, which came in 1981 in the Socialist Papandreou’s first government, has turned out to be a boon for Greece: It brings billions in aid; it is reinforcement for Greece’s democratic institutions, and it confers major-league status on a nation of 10 million people.

Despite a rising tide of Balkan nationalism that has accompanied the Macedonian crisis, the Greeks, like their government, seem content with their place in Europe. “We are in Europe to stay. We believe in Europe,” says Telemachus Hytiris, the prime minister’s spokesman.

Events have persuaded a fair number of influential Europeans, though, that Greece is out of step and that it has scant prospects of picking up the pace. Is it a fair judgment?

Speaking to reporters early this year, Theodoros Pangalos, Greek minister for European affairs, lamented what he described as a European bias against Greece.

“First there is a slightly racist view of those who are too Southern or too Eastern, who are viewed as different. Second, it is our economic status, which we must take care to address, especially the huge public debt and the budget deficit. Third is the Skopje (Macedonia) issue. . . . “

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Macedonia, as a pregnant case in point, has forced an issue on Europe that matters only to the Greeks.

They argue that the new republic’s name, emblems, national systems and constitution signal expansionist designs against the northern Greek province of Macedonia. Greece calls the new republic simply Skopje, after its capital city, or even Fyrom (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, its U.N. name).

In Washington last month, President Clinton urged a visiting Papandreou to lift the embargo. Papandreou listed conditions: the Macedonian flag being stripped of its sun symbol, which Greeks hold as a national icon identified with Alexander the Great, and some articles being stricken from the Macedonian constitution.

Macedonia says everything can be negotiated, but only after the blockade is lifted.

Meanwhile, the drama plays on. Says Greek nationalist Lakis Lazopoulos, a well-known entertainer:

“Are we poor and small? Yes, we are. But I know what I am and who I am, and I didn’t say I was somebody else. . . . Europeans don’t like us because we are the people who say no. We have a different character.”

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Montalbano reported from Athens and Marshall from Brussels.