Fading Will, Failing Dreams

Europe--the dream, the ideal, even the Continent's vaunted " Year"--seems dead, or nearly so. Only twelve months ago, Western Europe appeared to be moving euphorically toward political and economic integration. Building on a successful customs union and a common agriculture program, leaders of the Common Market nations envisioned a true Continental community by the end of the decade. The vision is fading fast. Europe has settled into a state of dejection and disarray. So gloomy is the mood that some of the most dedicated pan-Europeanists are even questioning the very future of traditional parliamentary democracy.

Minority governments are attempting to rule in Britain, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. There were no effective governments at all last week in Italy and Belgium. In France, isolated and ailing President Georges Pompidou did little to restore confidence in his ability to govern by a largely cosmetic Cabinet reshuffling. In Bonn, Chancellor Willy Brandt, increasingly distant and indecisive, has seen his party's popularity plummet to its lowest level since 1957. In Britain, Prime Minister Harold Wilson has scraped into office with an avowed distaste for his country's membership in the European Economic Community.

The loss of national will inevitably saps the decisiveness needed for international cooperation. The danger, notes a French Eurocrat, is that "Europe is not irreversible. This situation cannot continue beyond the end of the year without killing us." Adds another Frenchman: "In the terms of psychoanalytical treatment, we will either find our equilibrium or this will lead to suicide."

No Control. The basic reason for the malaise is popular disenchantment with unresponsive governments, whether of the left or the right. Not only are these governments unable to manage crises, contends TIME Chief European Correspondent William Rademaekers, but they seemingly cannot communicate their problems to the public. "Europeans were told that there was an oil shortage, but then reassured that there wasn't one. They have been told that wage increases cannot be made because they would be inflationary, and then told that they are facing a 10% to 15% inflation imported from neighboring countries. They see their currencies floated, revalued and devalued at something resembling whim. They see their leaders retreating farther and farther from the public eye, ministers issuing decrees that wipe out savings or make it impossible to take that cherished vacation.

"On all sides they are swamped with scandals: government officials taking bribes, gigantic corporations making gigantic profits, and billions of dollars sloshing from one currency market to another. Through all this they see no hint of a policy, European or national. Still they are asked to sacrifice--use less gas, scale down wage demands. But for whom? they ask. And for what?"

It was the early, heady belief of Common Market Founder Jean Monnet that economic integration would lead to political unity. That evaluation no longer seems inevitable or even necessarily desirable to most European leaders. They are not in the mood for the arduous tasks of adopting a common currency, formulating joint defense and foreign policies, or agreeing on a multilateral energy program. There is no longer a convergence of national interests among West European nations. As a top Belgian Foreign Ministry official noted last week, "The Germans no longer need Europe, not even economically for its large markets. The French are convinced that any new progress toward unity will only mean a loss of the economic and political advantages they have already won. The British government knows that a majority of its people are against the Community."

One deep source of friction, accentuated by the Yom Kippur War and the Middle East oil cutback, is Europe's relationship to the U.S. Is Europe, as most of its governments desire, to retain close economic, political and defense ties with Washington? Or, as the French maintain, must the Continent largely ignore U.S. interests? The French sometimes frame the choice in the context of continued hope for a united Europe. Said Premier Pierre Messmer: "Europe is not moribund." However, calling for "an extension of European cooperation, which we sincerely wish," he added that "it makes sense only in the affirmation of an authentic European personality." The French do not advocate withdrawal of the 310,000 U.S. troops now in Europe, but their recent obduracy may well strengthen the pressures back in Washington for a pullout.

Internal Politics. With Edward Heath's fall in Britain, the major decisions on Europe's future should logically now be made by Pompidou and Brandt. Yet both men are largely preoccupied with internal politics. France's President, closeted with a few intimate advisers, spends much of his time brooding about the growing appeal of the left. He fears that a faltering French economy would lead, after election year 1976, to a popular-front government headed by Socialist Francois Mitterrand, with Communist ministers in key posts. He fears above all that West Germany may become a political "neutral" in East-West relations, which could lead to a profound change not only in France's foreign policy but also possibly in its form of government.

Willy Brandt, whose Social Democratic Party suffered a stunning electoral setback in its traditional stronghold of Hamburg last week, is even more gloomy about the future. While West Germany sits on the fattest bankroll in Europe, its leaders are haunted by an old fear: that if Germans begin to push, steer and wrestle the Common Market into the image they want, then the hatreds and stereotypes of the Nazi past will burst back in full venom.

In last week's issue, the newsmagazine Der Spiegel printed a summary of what it claims is a secret diary of Brandt's. The Chancellor has denied that he keeps any diary at all; yet close friends concede that many of the entries reflect what Spiegel calls his deep pessimism about the Continent's future. Brandt sees "signs of rupture everywhere," as real power flows from the hands of government into other blocs and pressure groups--university students, minority parties and oil companies, for example. Unless the deterioration in the system is halted, Brandt seems to fear, parliamentary democracy in 20 or 30 years could be replaced by radical Communism or fascism.

Powerful Magnet. The regionalism of postwar years is another powerful magnet drawing authority from central governments--and a countervailing force against European union. For the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish, the Bretons of France, the Basques and Catalans of Spain, the Walloons and Flemings of Belgium, separatism--political autonomy and preservation of cultural traditions--is the overriding aim.

On the other hand, Belgian Law Professor Francois Perin, who heads his country's separatist Walloon Party, argues that Europe cannot cohere without regionalism. "The base of Europe," he argues,"must be the region, where people can feel that they influence their destinies. The top is Europe. It is the nation-state in the middle that is bankrupt. The state is losing power to Europe on top and to the regions below. The old centralized state of Napoleon is too distant from people."

At this particular time of crisis, the heads of Europe's states are, almost without exception, technicians, manipulators of votes and bureaucracies, rather than leaders who can inspire, unite or even explain. They are, to paraphrase Winston Churchill's comment on Clement Attlee, modest men--with every reason to be modest. European leaders today have neither the imagination nor --unfortunately--the will to devise a new community that would be something grander than a mere economic union of convenience. To be sure, not everyone is convinced that some form of European superstate is called for. Among the skeptics is Novelist Andre Malraux, Culture Minister under Charles de Gaulle. " Suddenly we looked in the mirror and saw that everything we had been told about Europe for ten years was false," he told TIME Correspondent Paul Ress last week. "I don't deplore the idea of Europe. I think it's a lie." Malraux believes that a truly united Europe "can only be built in the face of a common enemy, just as the U.S. was created against English troops."

In fact, the old vision of Europe was always nobler than that of a simple alliance against a common enemy. The tragedy today is that barring catastrophe, there seem no forces capable of replacing the grand vision on which the European Community was founded.

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