Forging a deeper European unity?

Europe has desired greater unity for decades – answering Henry Kissinger's famous question, "What's Europe's phone number?"

Friday and Saturday, a major wrestling match is under way in Brussels over creating a more singular, decisive Europe.

The Germans, who hold the European Union presidency until the end of June, say that time is running out to set that Europe in motion – one with a permanent president, a foreign minister, a diplomatic corps, and one able to make decisions without requiring unanimity among what is now 27 disparate states.

Yet deep sentiments in Britain and Poland over ceding power to a central government in Brussels and nagging doubts that every state can ratify a single set of rules have put the Brussels agreement in question.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says bluntly that a failure this weekend among European leaders to agree will forestall the project of Europe for years – and feed inertia and divisions in what is already an ungainly number of members.

"Europe has always moved forward by projects and visions," says Heinrich Kreft, a former German diplomat and senior policy adviser to the Christian Democratic Union. "Now we have the feeling that things are falling apart, and that if we don't act now to bring the 27 together, Europe will fall behind. This is a very crucial time. You could end up with two groups going different ways."

In 2004, all EU members signed the Rome constitution to create what is sometimes called a "super Europe." But the effort foundered when France and the Netherlands voted against it in popular referendums. Progress was impossible until after the French elections were decided this May.

New French president Nicolas Sarkozy seems confident he can help Germany restart the European project. The German-led plan is not being freighted with the word "constitution," but is called a "treaty" about "institutional reforms." It is designed to be ratified by national parliaments rather than by popular referendums – thought to be dicier as a sell.

Chancellor Merkel wants a six-month timetable, a "treaty" whose ultimate goal is to set reforms in place, so that the 2009 European elections would take place under new rules. Europeans would elect a federal parliament at that time – one with more clout.

Yet despite Merkel's push, it is not clear whether Europe's leaders can find agreement at the meeting, expected to end Saturday. The Germans had been under the impression that British Prime Minister Tony Blair would pave the way in Britain; but there has been a striking lack of preparation among ordinary Britons for the kind of sweeping changes that would be presented to them. Britain is not ready to give immigration and foreign policy, for example, over to the EU.

An EU with 27 members working under rules designed for half that number is akin, as one Paris commentator put it, to a computer "using an old 20th-century operating system for 21st-century demand – it is too slow."

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