All Aboard for the
New Europe
Remember when Europe was just Europe? When it meant
a trans-Atlantic crossing, a weekend in London to see the changing of the guard
and the Harrods food halls, then to Paris for the clothes and the perfumes, Vienna
for the opera and the Sacher torte, Rome for the
Pope, and then back with a load of booty and a vague feeling of having seen the
land of your (or probably someone else's) ancestors? Simple
days, long gone. If you want to know Europe -- really know Europe --
it's not so easy anymore. Now it's no longer just a holiday destination. Europe
is a community.
They say it was Americans who invented Europe, the Old World
they needed to set against their New World. From before the Revolution they
looked back across the Atlantic waves, joining all the fragmentary pieces into
a single entity. But if Americans knew Europe was Europe, and Europeans Europeans, the Europeans themselves didn't. They thought
they were Bavarians or Serbs, Athenians or Cornishmen, Glaswegians or Nicois. They liked their local beer and cheese, their local
dialect and architecture -- and they didn't much like anyone else's. If you
lived in Graz, you knew the men in Klagenfurt were simple, their women unclean,
their food inedible. And Klagenfurt was a mere 60
miles away. Imagine the feelings about the citizens of some other country .
So if Americans feel confused about the New Europe, a lot of
New Europeans do too. Disagreement about how New European the British are
prepared to be cost Margaret Thatcher her job. Her more soothing successor,
John Major, talks of playing his proper part in Europe, but no one in Britain
is sure what it is. Murmurs of anti-European dissent sound in
the pubs of London, the trattorias of Italy, the tavernas of Greece.
But like it or not, Europe is in motion. More and more, it is
beginning to feel like an international federation, with a political vision, a
new future, a role in history as what Mikhail Gorbachev has called "the
common European home." In 1992 it is all supposed to come together in a
single barrier-free market, the first stage toward yet greater union. So how
did it happen? How does it work? And how and where do I find it? What Is the
New Europe?
It all began in the chaos after 1945, when yet another European
Great War ended, and a new cold one started. In the climate of postwar
destruction, the dream of a united Europe revived among far-sighted political
figures, especially in France and Germany. The Americans helped, with the
Marshall Plan, NATO, and eventually the McDonald's hamburger, the universal
currency of eating. The Russians helped too, slicing an Iron Curtain right down
through the continent. Starting with common economic problems and common
security needs, Europe became a hope, an ideal, the foundation of a new
stability, and eventually of a new prosperity.
The progress was not simple. The New Europe we now know, or
more probably don't know, was born in 1957 with the Treaty of Rome -- as
important in European history as the Congress of Vienna or the Diet of Worms.
"Europe" -- a.k.a. the European Economic Community (E.E.C.) or more
properly nowadays the European Community (E.C.) -- began as a trading club of
six key nations (now known as the Original Six), France, West Germany, Italy,
the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, who tried, often inharmoniously, to
harmonize their economic development by creating new European institutions: a
parliament, a law, a pattern of trade.
Britain was not one of these countries. As an offshore island
enjoying a Special Relationship with the United States, and with a Commonwealth
to consider, Britain was not sure it felt European at all. If it did, it was
not in the same way as most other Europeans. But it soon took the lead in
forming another Europe, which for clarity we had better call Europe 2. This
"Europe" -- a.k.a. the European Free Trade Association (E.F.T.A.) --
was forged in the Treaty of Stockholm in 1959, and consisted of Britain,
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal. The E.F.T.A. also
tried to harmonize European trade, but on different principles, with different
ambitions, and without trying to forge new political institutions. Confused
already? It has grown much more complicated since.
In 1973, the British decided they were European in a different
way than the different way they first thought; so they left Europe 2 (E.F.T.A.)
and joined Europe 1 (the E.C.). Denmark and Ireland also came in, and the
Original Six became the New Nine. Europe 2 had lost two of its members, but made
up by enrolling Finland and Iceland. Then in 1981 Greece joined the E.C., and
in 1986 Spain and Portugal (which was formerly in the E.F.T.A.) came in. So the
Six now became the Twelve. That is why there are 12 stars on the blue and
yellow European flag that flies at many state occasions and over the buildings
in the three main cities -- Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg, France -- in
which the E.C. is based.
More will be needed soon. Europe 1 at present covers about
half the countries of Europe, but it is likely to grow fast. Some of the
E.F.T.A. countries are gradually nosing toward membership. So are some of the
newly open countries of what used to be called the Eastern bloc, if they can
establish free markets. So are Malta, Cyprus and Turkey. Europe could soon be a
very large entity indeed, and some of it not in Europe. The Original Six could
well become the 25. And Europe will need a much bigger flag. Where Is the New
Europe?
The New Europe is everywhere and nowhere. Think of it as a
mega-country a little bit like Switzerland, a confusing democratic federation
of states and languages. It is a country with strict regulations, so the noise
of a lawnmower should be the same in Munich or Manchester, Aarhus or Alicante.
It has its own currency, the European ECU. Its political officials are elected
but relatively powerless. Its bureaucrats are the opposite. It has its own
capital, or rather several: Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxembourg. This is where its
officials and parliamentarians meet, though they often don't, because they're
on the train or the plane trying to find the city holding this week's meeting.
The New Europe has its own citizens; many Europeans now are
proud to be European. It has its own leader, the President of the European
Commission, currently Jacques Delors, a former French
Finance Minister and steely Euro-visionary. It has its own elected Parliament
(mostly Strasbourg) and its own European Court of Justice (Luxembourg), and
both of them are serviced by its own civil-service bureaucracy (mostly
Brussels). Everyone agrees that this could be tidied up, but, given national
rivalries, only by moving the whole thing out of Europe altogether, perhaps to
the Bahamas.
Just like Switzerland, the New Europe is a very pretty
country. It has excellent agriculture, and its fields are full of grain, vines
and cows, supported by subsidy. That is why there are so many lakes and
mountains. Over here you will find the great Beef Mountain, the vast Grain
Mountain, the slippery slopes of the Butter Mountain. Over there are the
glorious Milk, Olive Oil and Wine Lakes, all the product of European surpluses.
But the really big mountain -- the Jungfrau that towers over everything -- is
the Paperwork Mountain. For the New Europe is a country with many languages.
Nine of them are official, and everything must be translated and copied into
each of them. That is why Europe has a tenth language: Euro-bureaucratese, or Eurospeak. How to Speak Eurospeak
It is almost impossible to speak Eurospeak,
because it consists almost entirely of acronyms and other abbreviations. The
camel is supposed to be an animal designed by a committee. An acronym is a
description designed by a committee, and usually to describe another committee.
Though it was probably invented in America, the New Europe has brought acronymery to a fine art.
Late last fall Britain, in an unexpected initiative, entered a
new patch in the acronymic mine field. The British Treasury took the pound
sterling into the E.R.M. of the E.M.S. while trying to avoid E.M.U. by following
the route of the hard ECU. The E.R.M. is the Exchange Rate Mechanism, E.M.S. is
the European Monetary System, E.M.U. is Economic and Monetary Union, and the
ECU is the unit of European currency, still an ideal fiction. As Euro-nyms go, ECU is a good one, because it means European
Currency Unit in English and "crown" or "coin" in French.
So is Erasmus; it seems right that the European Community Action Scheme for
Mobility of University Students should so happily mesh with the name of the
great European scholar.
However, to complicate matters, sometimes the acronyms are not
the same in different countries. So the French for E.A.G.G.F. (European
Agricultural Guidance and Guaranteed Fund) is of course F.E.O.G.A. Often,
though, the acronym is a Euro-blessing in disguise. So we thank God for STAR,
the Community Program for the Development of Certain Less Favored Regions of
the Community by Improving Access to Advanced Telecommunications Facilities.
How Important Is the New Europe?
Very. There is no doubt that coordination within
Europe is accelerating fast. Even the British agree with that. In an ominous
message for Thatcher, her Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Geoffrey Howe, announced
that "the next European train is about to leave the station, for an uncertain
destination." It was now for Britain to decide whether it wished to be in
the driver's cab or the rear compartment, and whether it should move forward or
backward. Actually, the British have played a distinctive role in Europe by
trying to do both (and if you think that is impossible, you've never traveled
by British Rail). Sir Geoffrey's speech spelled the beginning of the end for
Thatcher, who had no real wish to see the train move at all.
Just now the European train is indeed driving in two different
directions. One is toward the European Superstate,
the idea of a Federated Europe being hurried forward by Jacques Delors, who seeks a common currency, a common political
agenda, a common European bank, a common super-parliament. For the
Euro-dreamers, the single market of 1992 is just one small step toward the
United States of Europe.
The other destination is a looser pan-European federation of
nation states, including the many new ones applying for entry. Europe could be
a complex and mixed linkage of nations and regions from Shannon to the Urals,
spreading its trade, its free-market ideals, its political expectations and no
doubt its acronyms internationally inside a weaker ring-fence. Europe has
several possible futures, all in contention, as its many and various
committees, its parliament, its commission and its inter-government conferences
meet in its various capitals to consider and argue about the European promise.
Meanwhile Europe remains, for all its uncertainties, an object
of wonder. It is, just now, a heady mixture of dreams and realities. In
practical terms, it is a Parliament that meets fairly often but does very
little. It is a Council of Ministers drawn from all the member countries who meet less often but do rather more. It is a Court of Law
that passes legislation on matters from women's rights to the size of a beer
glass. But above all, Europe is Berlaymont.
Berlaymont is a four-legged building in downtown
Brussels, parts of which have been closed because its asbestos pollution
violates European regulations. It is also home to many of the 16,000 or more
bureaucrats who actually run the European Community. Overseen by 17
commissioners appointed by the member states, but loyal only to Europe itself,
the European Commission tries to administer a unity that does not yet exist.
Stacked in complicated hierarchies, from Commissioners and Directors-General to
Junior Assistant Administrative Assistants and humble stagiaires,
or bureaucratic beginners, the new Euro-chiks do what
bureaucrats always do. They compete and rival, regulate and legislate,
administering powers larger than those of any nation-state and a budget that
would be the envy of any small country.
Franz Kafka would feel at home in Berlaymont,
if Franz Kafka ever felt at home anywhere. Not since the age of the Chinese
mandarins or the late days of the Austro-Hungarian empire have so many
unelected officials in so many file-bound offices been given such a chance to
shape and administer the future of a large piece of the world -- making or
breaking its farmers and industrialists, shaping the ways of world trade,
opening or closing educational, cultural, political and economic opportunities.
No wonder that Berlaymont sometimes
feels like a great medieval court. Here plenipotentiaries call, priests and
solicitors come to plead, courtiers come to make their careers, fixers come to
fix, and framers to frame. Berlaymont is a babble of
languages, a dovecote of translators, an ambush of ambassadors, a manipulation
of ministers, a shuttle of diplomats, a lobby of lawyers, an aviary of
advisers, a polish of chauffeurs. It's the half-finished home of an idea still
in the making. But the European train really has left the station; and it's gathering speed fast.
Published in February 3, 1991
By Malcolm Bradbury
On The New York Times On The Web
Copyright
1998 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/01/specials/bradbury-neweuro.html
Other interesting
articles written by Bradbury: [Next] [1] [2]
[3]
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