Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/100592/10059957.000

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                                                                                EUROPE, Page 62

IN THE HANDS OF The People


Why Europeans are thinking twice before committing themselves
to closer union

By MARGOT HORNBLOWER/COGNAC -- With reporting by James O.
Jackson/Aachen


    Late in life, Jean Monnet, a Cognac salesman who went on
to become the architect of the Common Market, mused about his
dream for a United States of Europe. He thought back to his
birthplace in this brandy-making town of Southwest France, where
the grapes ripen slowly in the September sun, then mellow for
decades in oaken barrels beneath the limestone distilleries.
"The great thing about making cognac," he said, "is that it
teaches you above all to wait. Man proposes, but time and God
and the seasons have to be on your side."

    Four decades have passed since Monnet's bold proposal of
a more perfect union began to take form. But last week the
citizens of Cognac, and of towns and cities across the European
Community, signaled that they want to wait even longer --
perhaps forever -- before joining a federalist monetary and
political structure.

    The grand reasons why European integration makes sense are
still there. But try telling that to angry, suspicious citizens,
whose object of ire is the virtually unreadable Maastricht
treaty, negotiated last December by the 12 nations of the
European Community, which lays out a complex blueprint for the
greater economic and political union of the Continent -- a plan
that would take Europe far beyond the free-trade zone that goes
into effect in January, to a single currency and common foreign
and defense policies. The Danes' refusal to approve Maastricht
last June ignited simmering popular resentment, and France's
razor-thin ratification proved just how deep public anxiety
runs. The grass-roots revolt has redefined European politics,
crossing the traditional left-right cleavages with new fault
lines between poor and prosperous, rural and urban, nationalist
and Europeanist. The Establishment seems stunned. "Either Europe
will become more democratic," acknowledged E.C. President
Jacques Delors, whose organization has its headquarters in
Brussels, "or Europe will be no more."

    North of the Franco-German border, Charlemagne's bones
rest in the gilded tomb of Aachen's cathedral. The community's
12-star flag flutters from public buildings in a town that was
briefly, in the 9th century, the capital of a Holy Roman Empire
that united Europe from Brittany to Bohemia. But today, as
Germans' once overwhelming support for Maastricht ebbs, flower
seller Barbel Krutt speaks for Aachen's townspeople: "You can
send all the politicians to the moon: this treaty does not mean
a thing to folks like us."

    In Britain an impassioned parliamentary debate last week
revealed the public's deep unease about the agreement in the
wake of a devaluation of the pound that has shaken the
government's economic policies. "Maastricht does not create a
superstate," said Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. "But the
feeling among Europe's people -- the real people -- is that it
does."

    Real people. Like the people of Cognac, where signs in
five languages welcome visitors to "the City at the Heart of
the World." It is no idle boast. Cognac (pop. 20,000) exports
95% of its brandy, $2 billion worth a year, west to musty men's
clubs of Manhattan, and east to Japan, where businessmen buy it
packaged in Baccarat crystal at $1,000 a bottle. The French
drink less and less cognac. "We've been switching to whiskey
ever since the Americans liberated us in '44," says Jean-Luc
Lebuy, a Remy Martin executive. He voted for the treaty, he
said, because "it is the only way for Europe to avoid being
gobbled up by the Americans and the Japanese."

    To Jacqueline Autef, whose tobacco shop is around the
corner from Monnet's old house, such promises ring hollow. Once
the most powerful nation in Europe, France may worry about its
eclipse by Japan, the U.S. or Germany. Autef, 53, feels insecure
on a more basic level. "I voted for Mitterrand in 1981 because
he promised to reduce unemployment," said the tobacconist, who
supports an invalid husband. "But today 3 million French are out
of work. My neighbor committed suicide when he lost his job.
Families are shattering." Whether stung by France's 10% jobless
rate, by recession in Britain or by the costs of unification in
Germany, voters are feeling the pinch -- and they are taking it
out on Maastricht, the politicians' pet project. "Everyone is
looking for scapegoats," says Cognac city councilor Jerome
Mouhot. "Brussels is a convenient target."

    Politicians have blamed unpopular measures, like
agricultural reforms, on the bureaucrats. But a wholesale lapse
in leadership throughout the Community allowed doubts and
suspicions to take root. Political leaders galloped ahead,
blithely drawing up plans without consulting the wishes, worries
and hopes of the people. Last week a sizable portion made it
clear they are not about to trade their national identity for
something else without knowing why. "Maastricht has yet to be
explained," acknowledged Portugal's President Mario Soares.

    Ten miles south of Cognac's red-roofed mansions, the
farmers of Segonzac explain why. MAASTRICHT: DANGER! proclaims
a French Communist Party poster, but its hammer and sickle has
been plastered over with the red-white-and-blue sticker of the
far-right National Front, which appropriated the same slogan.
The department of Charente, which includes the Cognac area,
approved the treaty by a mere 13 votes out of 178,672 cast. Much
of the opposition came from farmers. All rural France resented
the agricultural-subsidy cutbacks initiated by Brussels, but
even though they do not directly affect Charente grape growers,
other regulations do. Brussels limits the amount of distilled
wine they can sell according to volume rather than alcohol
content, an unfair rule, they claim. And Big Brother even
intrudes into their leisure time by restricting the hunting of
migratory birds.

    Rural alienation runs deep. "They signed this complicated
treaty without telling anyone," said Michel Forgeron, a Segonzac
grape grower whose calloused hands and weathered face attest to
a life outdoors. "Now we don't know where we are going." Until
recently, he sold the spirits he distilled from 40 acres to
Cognac's family firms. Now multinationals such as Seagram and
Guinness have moved in: even Monnet's old company was once sold
to Germans and then to Britons. "Decision makers in Toronto or
Paris do not care whether we live or die," said Forgeron's wife
Francine. "We are pawns on the chessboard."

    In a last-minute panic before the referendum, the French
government sent copies of Maastricht to all 38 million voters
-- a maneuver that may have hurt as much as helped. "The text
was incomprehensible," said Guy Bechon, 56, principal of
Cognac's Jean Monnet High School. A stocky fellow with a
doctorate in physics, he nonetheless voted for the treaty
"because I did not want my children to face a future of
isolationism. Perhaps we must lose a little of our originality
in order to progress." But Bechon would not go so far as Monnet,
who hoped that transcending nationalism would "liberate Europe
from its past." In making up his mind, Bechon kept mulling over
memories that the politicians would have him forget. "In Europe
we have a history that lives on in our gut," he said. "As a
child, I remember cowering as the Germans goose-stepped by me.
Never a day passed that my grandfather did not mention World War
I. Today in Sarajevo it seems to be a replay."

    In France the Maastricht referendum has unleashed a wave
of fear over German domination that has been building ever
since unification swelled the size and wealth of its rich
neighbor. Britain, roused to resentment by the Bundesbank's
indifference to the disruptive effects of the high interest
rates, felt it had no choice but to take the pound out of the
European monetary system two weeks ago.

    But the German issue cuts both ways. Politicians such as
former Prime Minister Michel Rocard call Maastricht a way to
harness the "German demons." Folding Germany into Western
Europe's strong embrace, the argument goes, will prevent it from
turning eastward to build a new economic empire around the
former Soviet satellites. On the other hand, a growing number
of Frenchmen find the intimacy prescribed by Maastricht too
close for comfort. "France has been a sovereign nation for 1,000
years," said Cognac Mayor Francis Hardy. "We have suffered too
much in three wars with Germany to melt into one federal
agglomeration."

    Half an hour south of Cognac, Pierre-Remy Houssin, a
National Assembly Deputy, welcomed 49 Bavarians last week to "a
Musical Encounter" in his village of Baignes. The Germans, from
Baignes' sister city of Dietramszell, near Munich, brought three
kegs of beer and played brassy tunes, while the French choir
chimed in with Mozart and Bach. Houssin told the Germans that
he opposes Maastricht. "The best way to fall down stairs is to
run up four steps at a time," he joked. But the Bavarians hardly
seemed to mind. "Maastricht is a bad program," said Hans Gams,
21, a farmworker. "We are fighting for our existence, given the
low prices for milk and meat."

    In the end, divisive as it was, the French referendum has
served a purpose: whatever Europe emerges from the turmoil will
have been strengthened by an invigorating democratic debate.
"We will be listening more to the people," said Pierre
Beregovoy, France's Prime Minister. In Cognac, the "real people"
might have told him long ago that the dream of a United States
of Europe would have to bide its time, like a bracing brandy
that takes decades to meld the flavors of many vineyards.