Heads in the sand.

Even skeptical European politicians want to keep Maastricht alive. Their constituents have no such agenda.

THE British government was planning an amusing little ceremony for July 1, when it took over the rotating presidency of the European Community. A logo had been devised for Britain's six months in the presidential chair: a lion stepping into the EC's circle of stars. Someone thought it would be a good idea to bring a newborn lion cub to the press conference that day, and have it christened by a Foreign Office minister. Unfortunately, although several pregnant lionesses were located in British zoos, none could be guaranteed to deliver on time. One zoo offered a baby giraffe instead; but the offer was declined.

Foreign Office officials are notorious for their lack of imagination. Abandoning their search for cuddly mammals, they could have settled instead on the perfect symbol for the European Community at this crucial moment in its history: an ostrich with its head in the sand. Alternatively, a headless chicken could have been encouraged to run around in a few circles. For the truth is that, ever since the Danes rejected the Maastricht Treaty on June 2, the atmosphere in the council chambers of the EC has been frantic with indecision. The only consistent policy has been the desperate one of pretending that the Danish vote never happened.

There were no contingency plans. Non-ratification had been unthinkable; at least, it had been unthought. The whole of 1991 had been spent putting together the treaty (which commits the EC to economic and monetary union), and the whole of 1992 was earmarked for ratifying it in each of the 12 member states. Most of the treaty consists of amendments to the original document which set up the EC, the Treaty of Rome: for that reason, it requires unanimous ratification by all the countries that were (or later became) parties to that earlier treaty. If only 11 out of 12 ratify the Maastricht accord, it cannot function as a valid treaty. Without unanimity, it can have no effect whatsoever.

When the people of Ireland voted heavily in favor of the treaty two weeks later, a chorus of European foreigu ministers declared that the Maastricht Treaty was "back on course." But the nautical metaphor was singularly ill-chosen. By voting no, the Danes had not perpetrated some minor navigational error that could be corrected by other voters elsewhere. They had sent the treaty to the bottom of the sea.

What had gone wrong in Denmark? The first error was to allow the Danish people to find out what was in' the treaty. Half a million copies were printed, and they sold out within a week. "It is a mistake to let people see the treaty," said one prominent member of the European Parliament, the French socialist Jean-Pierre Cot; "they will only misunderstand it."

But many Danes seem to have understood it only too well. Their greatest worry was that, with the dismantling of frontiers and the merging of currencies, Denmark would become little more than a province of its giant neighbor, Germany. There were other concerns too: some disliked the idea of a common European defense policy, which might lead one day to their children having to serve in a European army, and others thought the treaty threatened the constitutional position of the Danish monarchy. Some feared that Denmark's high levels of social welfare would be reduced, and some objected to the proposed transfers of money from rich European countries to poor ones--not because they resented helping the poor, but because they preferred their money to go to genuinely poor countries in the Third World, instead of bankrolling inefficient industries in southern Europe.

The range of objections is wide, and it is reflected and amplified in many other EC countries. Generally speaking, objections to Maastricht are a privilege of the richer member states: the poorest members (Greece, Portugal, Ireland) are already dependent on subsidies from Brussels, and are promised even bigger handouts (styled "cohesion funds") under the Maastricht Treaty. The conclusive argument in Ireland was that for every Irish pound paid into the Community's coffers, Ireland receives six in return. But in Germany, the largest net contributor to EC funds, the high cost of membership is turning public opinion against Maastricht. In one recent opinion poll which asked, "Can Germany afford further moves toward European unity?" 75 per cent said no. Even higher percentages have been recorded in Germany against the plan to abandon the Deutsche Mark and create a new European currency--nicknamed "Esperanto money"--instead.

In France, on the other hand, the most popular objection is not to Eurocurrency, but to the treaty's plan for Eurocitizenship, which will entitle non-French nationals to vote in France's local elections. This plan required a change in the French constitution, which was agreed to by a special session of the legislature at Versailles on June 23; but the issue still rankles with French voters, who will have a chance to express their views in a referendum this fall.

Policy-makers v. People

WHEN ALL the objections to Maastricht are listed together, they may seem to amount to nothing more than a rainbow alliance of wildly different concerns--some right-wing, some leftwing, some practical, some constitutional. But if a single common theme emerges, it is that millions of ordinary voters feel that they have not been properly represented or even consulted. In Denmark all the major parties supported the treaty. In both Germany and Britain the two main political parties were, until last month, united in their official support for it. The British Labour Party is wavering now; some prominent Social Democrats in Germany have also criticized the treaty, but their party is still committed to ratifying it. Unprecedentedly, the failure of German politics to respond to public opinion was denounced in an interview by the federal president of Germany, Richard von Weizsaecker. "When you read in the constitution that political parties function by the will of the people," he said, "and compare that with what actually happens, it brings hot tears to the eyes."

Nevertheless, it is these out-of-touch politicians whose job it now is to salvage something from the wreck of the Maastricht Treaty. Their preferred solution, not surprisingly, is to do nothing; that is, to do nothing new, but merely continue with their own ratifications until, by the end of the year, Denmark can be shown to be the only country opposed to the treaty. They could then bully the Danes into either re-running their referendum on Maastricht in order to come up with the right answer this time, or having a referendum on leaving the EC altogether. Indeed, Chancellor Kohl has already started inserting into his speeches barely veiled hints that Denmark should either ratify or get out. But sooner or later Herr Kohl will realize that this could deepen the problem rather than solve it. Bullied into a second referendum on the same question, the stubborn Danes are even more likely to give the same answer; and if asked if they want to leave the EC altogether, they may perfectly well answer that they want to stay. "Yes to Europe, No to Union" was, after all, the slogan that won the "no" campaign its victory last month.

What none of the European governments can bring itself to face,. it seems, is the prospect of re-negotiating the text of the treaty itself. Even the Danish government is now reluctant to do this, arguing that since people voted no for so many different reasons, it cannot confidently point to any single section of the treaty which could be sacrificed to obtain a yes. The German government has signaled its superstitious horror of re-negotiation by calling the treaty "a Pandora's box"--a revealing reference to the casket which, in Greek mythology, contained all the evils in the world. The reluctance of the: British prime minister to re-negotiate is more puzzling, given that he fought so tenaciously against several sections of the treaty in the original negotiations. Mr. Major now claims that to re-open those issues would be to risk losing the concessions he gained; this is unconvincing, given that the whole point of renegotiation would be to make further concessions in the same direction to satisfy Denmark's needs. What seems to have happened is that the bravery of his isolated stand at Maastricht last December has grown to heroic proportions in his own memory: John Major has become emotionally identified with the result he obtained then, and does not want that achievement to be superseded now.

Sometimes Yes Means No

IF THE treaty cannot be rewritten, the next best solution is to add something extra to it. As one specialist in EC law cynically put it: "The idea is to tack on some further document which will explain that the treaty doesn't really mean what it says." The favorite theme for such a document is "subsidiarity," a concept from Catholic social theory which has become a buzz-word in EC circles. Roughly paraphrased as "the doctrine of minimum interference," or "the rule that decisions should be taken at the lowest level possible," it sounds like a good idea. But rough paraphrases are not enough: in order to counteract the huge accumulation of central powers in the hands of a federal European government, it needs a legal formulation precise enough and forceful enough to strike down government actions in court. No such formulation has yet been devised. One attempt at defining subsidiarity is already there in the Maastricht Treaty, but it is so badly phrased (a former president of the European Court has called it "a rich and prime example of gobbledygook") that, far from preventing the central authorities of the EC from framing more and more Eurolegislation, it will actually encourage them.

Even if such a magic antidote to Maastricht could be formulated, however, one final problem would remain. Such a statement would have to be inserted into the treaty itself or at least included in its final protocols. That means re-opening the text of the treaty, which all governments have agreed not to do. If, on the other hand, the antidote is contained in a separate declaration, it will have no legal force. Britain knows this only too well: at the last EC treaty negotiation, for the Single European Act in 1986, Britain insisted on adding a "declaration" to reserve the right of EC states to control the immigration of non-EC nationals. Last month the British government learned, to its surprise, that this declaration was legally worthless, and that if it tried to retain such immigration controls after the abolition of EC internal frontiers it would be forced to abandon them by the European Court.

The truth is that Maastricht can be salvaged only if it is rewritten. But the governments of the EC will neither rewrite it nor admit that it cannot be salvaged. Meanwhile the celebrations of Britain's presidency of this dynamic organization continue, with or without lion cubs. While an ostrich might symbolize the collective psychosis of the EC, the best symbol for the treaty itself would be one of those pets which, curled up and immobile in a corner of the cage, are imagined by their fond owners to be still hibernating, when they have in fact been dead and cold for months.

Mr. Malcolm is foreign editor of the London Spectator.